


every star leads me back to you

by winterbones



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, THAT au you know the one, but everything is still awful, krennic somehow even manages to be even creepier than he usually is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2018-09-16 14:00:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9275042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: in another time and another place, jyn and cassian still end up on a collision course that will help topple the emperor from his throne(or, that au where jyn is taken prisoner with galen and becomes cassian's top imperial informant, though for no noble reason)





	1. i.

Jyn’s fingers clasped tightly around the fabric at her neck, a self-conscious double check of the scarf that distinguished her face. Technically, Nar Shadaa was Hutt territory and they had no reason to give the Empire any of their holo-feeds, but she knew—better than anyone—that there were Imperial eyes and ears everywhere, even here.

For example—a couple, one a half-dressed Twi’lek and the other dressed like a spacer who’d been at the bad end of a cantina brawl, drunkenly swayed down the neon-drenched alleyway. But it was too precise, and anyone paying attention could see how the Twi’lek’s eyes darted everywhere, categorizing every face she stumbled passed. And Jyn would bet good credits that heavily padded jacket the spacer wore was hiding an Imperial standard issue blaster.

She ducked her head when they passed her, assuring herself that very few people who even recognize who she was. Her anonymity had been meant to a be a prison, a way to strange and starve her from simple human interaction, but instead it had become Jyn’s best weapon.

Even though every single instinct screamed at her to run, her nerves dropped to her knees to hum in frantic rabbit-energy, Jyn ambled into the _Slippery Slopes_ cantina as if she was just another Nar Shadaa visitor looking for a good time.

The bouncer had been paid to keep an out for her and pass her bracelet when she passed. Last time it had been a necklace with a heavy, blue stone. Before that a ring with a wide band. She’d been told to destroy them after each meeting—and she did—but there were moments just before she did, stroking a finger over whatever the bouncer had handed her that night, that she hesitated. It said a lot about her that this was the closest thing to a _gift_ she’d ever been given.

The inside of a bracelet had an encoded message, the location of a table in the cantina where she was supposed meet her Rebel contact. After another careful check to make she wasn’t being tailed, she approached the table. The action was pointless. He’d already cleared the area of any potential threat, but it gave Jyn a sense of agency, of control, if she did it herself.

She sat down at the table, saying nothing to the man already sitting there. He’d already ordered her a drink and a bowl of some kind of stringy soup with thick dark chunks in it. They both knew she wouldn’t eat or drink any of it, but he did it every time. It added to the picture of normalcy, just a man buying a pretty girl a drink.

“Take that off,” was the first thing he said to her. “You look like you’re trying to hide your face.”

Jyn grumbled and did, knowing that he was right. He was an expert of appearing relaxed and friendly. She’d only ever met him here in this cantina, but she imagined he blended in anywhere he wanted to, a Rebel base camp in worn fatigues, a cantina on Nar Shadaa in fitted trousers, in an Imperial base in a starched gray uniform.

She gripped the edge of the table tightly. He’d only told her his name once, begrudgingly, their second meeting when she insisted on it. _Trust_ , she’d said, _goes both ways_ and he’d laughed. She wasn’t looking for trust and neither was he.

“You said you had something important to tell me?”

Jyn nodded. There was a pilot, Bodhi Rook, on Eadu. Anytime she had a message she needed to get out she was supposed to tell Rook that she _wanted to play sabaac_ with him again. Bodhi would assure her they would play when he came back and when he did, he’d have a time and date for her.

“First things first.” She tapped the only piece of jewelry that was really _hers_ , a bracelet with a little computerized chip embedded in it, linked to a small account in Coruscant.

A beat, dark eyes asserting her with a hint of distaste before he fished out a datapad from his pocket. Jyn watched the way a silky strand of dark hair fell across his forehead and laid invitingly across the bridge between his brows. Her fingers itched. It wasn’t him specifically, but the idea of being able to just reach out and _touch_.

A small buzz at her wrist told her the credits had been uploaded to her account and Jyn felt it, spreading outward from the center of her chest. _Hope_. Coming here, despite all the risks and even though he didn’t care, always gave her hope.

“Now, your part.”

Jyn wet her lips. He was always so cool, so unfazed, that she was sometimes almost thankful for the hints of distaste, dislike, that colored his words when he spoke to her. He’d made it clear, without saying it, exactly what he thought of her, that if she didn’t continue to be such a source of useful information, he’d be done with her and he wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep if something happened to her. He thought she was callow and opportunistic, and she was there was no denying that. But not everyone could be a good little Rebel soldier, loyal to the cause. Some of them had to survive.

But this—this would be her ticket out—her chance out. And then she… she didn’t know. Jyn had never allowed herself think farther than the next day, but now the possibility of it gleamed, just out of her reach.

“They’re building a star killer.”

 

 _She wasn’t sleeping well_ , was the first thing Cassian Andor noticed about his Imperial informant. The next was, _she’s lost weight_. Even beneath her baggy pants and jacket—clearly man’s, judging by the way they sagged around her—he could tell that she must have forgone more than one or two meals since they last spoken. The purpling bags on her eyes made her look even smaller, more vulnerable, beneath the warm cantina lights.

It was his job to notice.

But it wasn’t his job to worry about it. Jyn—the only name she’d given him and the only name he’d been able to dig up; which damn well meant it was the only name she had—had one purpose, to supply him information. He’d been skeptical when Bodhi had told him Jyn was willing to play informant and had honestly only met with her that first time to protect Bodhi’s cover—by any means necessary. But Jyn had proven time and time again that her information was sound. She didn’t care but there had been more than one successful raid on Imperial bases thanks to her.

But she didn’t care. All she wanted was her credits. An unscrupulous little liar, who didn’t care about the men or women on either side. She only cared about herself. Cassian wondered what that was like—he hadn’t been worried _only_ about himself since he was six and picked up a vibro-blade, first in the name of the Separatist movement and then in the name of the Alliance. _From one lost cause to another_ , some might say.

“Come again,” he said, slowly, uncertain he had heard her right. Jyn usually came with guard rotations, supply line locations, once or twice the travel logs of a high-ranking Imperial official.

“That’s what they’re calling it,” she said, shoulders rolling sharply. “All those kyber crystals they’re lifting from Jedha? It’s powering the machine.”

“A star killer.”

She leaned forward, face intent. “I’m not _lying_ ,” she said, even though they both knew she lied with every breath. “This is real. Director Krennic is practically dancing…”

She trailed off. This was the first time, Cassian noted, she’d referred Orson Krennic by name. No one knew exactly what she did for the director—Bodhi had only a vague concept of a shadow that was always two steps behind him—but whatever it was she had almost unfettered access to his high-security data. It was enough that there had been some nights when Cassian had laid awake and wondered if—

“What proof do you have?”

She fished out a small palm-sized datachip and slid it toward him, as if they were exchanging personal information during a casual Nar Shadaa hookup. “It’s just chatter for now. But Krennic and Moff Tarkin, they’re discussing it. Not by name but they’re talking about test runs and the Rebel alliances.”

His heart kicked up a notch. He could admit she always had the best information, the kind that brought action to the front. Every time Bodhi brought word that Jyn was ready for another meet Cassian spent the days leading up to it practically vibrating with unspent energy.

“It isn’t enough.” Something of this importance, at this level, needed to be verified and verified again, and then a third time for a good measure. Plans and schematics, a full set of blueprints.

“It’s what I got,” Jyn said, little chin angling. 

“And that’s why I only sent you _half_ of your fee.”

Her lips parted into an intriguing o, her features moving from shock to disbelief to anger. She leaned across the table. “You—”

Cassian met her halfway, catching her wrist before she could raise it. He wondered how she had managed to get the vibro-blade passed him and was impressed despite himself. “That’s how this works, Jyn. You know that. You give me what I want, I give you what you want. We don’t operate on good faith.”

Jyn’s face was close enough that Cassian could feel the heat of breath on his cheek, short, uneven puffs of her anger. His stomach clenched. Close enough that he could see the hint of a cut on her lip, that she had obviously taken pains to hid, and he released her. She fell bodily back to her seat, petulance turning down her lips into a little moue.

“What do you want?” she demanded as she settled back in her chair.

“Proof. Something solid. Chatter is good, but it’s not enough.” The problem with the Alliance was that it was a cobbled together coalition of cells. They had grown too used to working on their own terms, with their own agendas, that getting anything done was almost impossible.

“Galen Erso heads the project,” Jyn said, more to herself. “Maybe I can…” She lifted her gaze to his, brilliant green eyes narrowed. “I’m doubling my price.”

He choked a laugh, hating that he was surprised. Of course, she was doubling her price. It would be dangerous and she wasn’t doing this for any noble reason. He was more annoyed with himself than her that he forgot sometimes tht she wasn’t exactly what she was, devious and untrustworthy.

“We can negotiation your price,” he agreed, all he was willing to give. The Alliance would never approve, already grumbled to him about the funds he pulled to pay Jyn, but she didn’t need to know that and he needed the information. “But you need to have a bargaining chip.”

“First rule of sabaac.” A ghost a smile touched her lips and Cassian felt it, a strange little pinch his chest. It was easy to forget, sometimes, how young she was but never forgot how breakable she was, how delicate.

She stood. “I have to get back before he misses me.”

Cassian caught her wrist, quickly covering his own shock at the action—as if he couldn’t let her leave. “I don’t imagine it will go over well if you’re caught.” He’d seen what Imperials did to rebel spies.

She tugged free. “You care?”

He forced himself to return his hands back to the table, palms flat. “You were willing to trade Imperial secrets, you might be willing to trade Alliance ones.”

Her lips pressed into a thin, angry line. “Then you had better hope I don’t get caught.”

She stomped away, fingers curling into fists and disappearing into the pockets of her thick jacket. For the very first time, Cassian allowed himself the one fantasy he had kept tightly locked away—of stripping her bare, exposing her, knowing each and everyone one of her secrets.

But only for a moment. Cassian still had one more job tonight.

 

_Jyn is four and trying to be brave. Like a Jedi, her mama had told and Jyn remembered how Jedi were brave and good and strong and they weren’t afraid of the dark or the quiet or the little hole in the wall that her mother had urged her into._

_“You mustn’t make a sound,” her mother had said in such a strange, tight voice that Jyn thought she was crying, but when she looked up her mother’s face was dry. She stroked a hand through Jyn’s hair. “I’ll be right back but you must be quiet.”_

_That felt like hours and hours ago. She’d heard her parents arguing, not with each other but they had angry voices that made Jyn tremble and she had to press a hand to her mouth to keep from crying for them, but then they had left the room. Now there was only silence, stretching endlessly, making Jyn’s entire body twitch._

_Then she heard it, boots on the floor. Not her mama’s, too heavy and slow, and Jyn tucked herself into as small a ball as she could make herself, holding her breath. She couldn’t make a sound, her mama had said. She wouldn’t._

_But the wall slide aside anyway and Jyn squinted into the sharp light. She was too scared to even cry out when hands grasped her by her shoulder and pulled her free of the dark hole._

_“Well, well, well.” The voice belonged to the hands and against the glare of harsh, Coruscant sunlight she had the impression of a tall, trim man with a white uniform and a craggily face. “What do we have here?”_

 

 

It worked in his favor that Jyn thought Cassian took her information at face value. He didn’t. He didn’t operate on blind faith. The Jedi had, and look where it had gotten them.

Every piece of information handed to him by his little informant was vetted, thoroughly and more than once, before they even thought about using it. The fact that Jyn had never been given them bad intel didn’t matter. Intelligence was as tangled a spiderweb, interwoven threads and Cassian was the one who had to make the hard choices of which one to unravel, which one to pull, which one to cut. Most days it was a lesson in frustration, leaving him with a sticky, muddled quagmire of hearsay and conjectures, whispered rumors of Empire goings on. Only a fool listened to everything he heard and _believed_.

Surviving twenty years as a rebel under the Empire’s nose meant he was no fool.

An Alliance sympathizer let them use her apartment—more of a room really—near Nar Shadaa’s red light sector. She sold drinks—among other things—in a cantina just below and the noise and traffic provided Cassian the perfect cover.

He had thirty minutes before pick up—and that was just enough time.

Dells, a scrawny Imperial tech with scraggily blonde hair in desperate need of a good dunking, was pacing when Cassian entered, like a trapped bird that kept beating itself against its glass cage. Intelligence was thinking about retiring him, largely at Cassian’s suggestion. Dells bounced between good intentions and cowardice. He did want to help, and did believe in the Alliance, but Cassian recognized brittle alloys that would crack at the first sign of pressure.  
“I don’t like this. It’s too open.”

“Relax.” The Empire had eyes and ears everywhere but Hutt space was always the safest, so long as you stayed downwind of the Hutts themselves. “What did you find out?”

“Nothing new.” Dells throw out his hands in clear frustration. This was the third time Cassian had had him dig, knowing each time that it meant that Dells stretched out his neck for the Imperial executioner. “She doesn’t _have_ a last name. She’s just Jyn, and she’s been attached to Director Orson Krennic since she was three?—four?—no one even knows how old she is.”

“But she has high-level clearance.”

“I don’t know. I told you, she’s not registered in any Imperial databank. If she has clearance than its Krennic’s.”

It wasn’t what he wanted to hear but he wasn’t surprised. No one had been able to pin Jyn down, not his own digging or Dells’, not even the investigation the Alliance had conducted had pulled anything up. It was as if Krennic had plucked her out of a nebula, fully formed by stardust.

“But I have heard…”

Cassian crossed his arms, trying not to look eager or too interested. If Dells thought, even for a moment, that Cassian was more than interesting verifying his sources he’d up his price.

“Heard what?”

“Krennic watches her like a hawk. I don’t know how she manages to slip away. But if he ever found out…” Dells trailed off and shrugged.

Cassian’s eyes narrowed. He knew what Dells was getting at and that he wanted a reaction. It was silly to feel that sharp pinch of disappointment, but there it was. A twitch in his chest. He and Dells had been working together for almost three years and he supposed… but that was the first lesson he’d ever learned— _assume nothing_.

Cassian sighed. “Name your price.”

“Look,” Dells said, fingers clasped tightly, until his grip turned his knuckles bone white, “I have to take care of myself, okay? And anyway, the girl’s going to be more trouble then she’s worth. Sooner or later, Krennic’s gonna find out and when he does—it might even better if he found out, and you moved on. Krennic doesn’t let his toys go.”

Cassian gripped Dells’s shoulder, tight and friendly, his voice impassive, even hinting at a smile. _Krennic’s toy_. “You’re right, of course.”

Dells was foolish enough to look relieved. “I can—I can even help you, you know? I can tell Krennic that she’s been… I dunno… running off to see a boyfriend. He’ll be so mad he won’t question it. And then I can—I’ll get assigned to Eadu.”

“And if Jyn talks?”

Dells winced, and only partly because Cassian’s hand had tightened on his shoulder, until his fingers pressed into bone. “I don’t think that’ll matter. Listen, they’ve said thing about Krennic and her. He’s not going to believe anything she says. If she even has the chance to say anything.” He seemed to realized what he was saying and paled. “I know how it sounds, but she made her choice. It’s better for everyone if we just—”

“Dells,” Cassian murmured.

Dells looked down, then up, mouth twisting in a twisted mask of disappointment and betrayal and for a moment, just a moment, there it was. _Regret_. Not hesitation, but acidic regret clogging at the back of Cassian’s throat, bitter and familiar. He swallowed it even as he pulled his blaster trigger, and inhaled the smell of ionized air.

It said a lot about poor, dead Dells that he died only with a soft sound of disbelief, staring up at Cassian with wide, dark eyes. He hit the ground with a soft thud, limbs sprawling out.

 _I don’t even know if he had a family_ , Cassian realized.

He swallowed, holstered his blaster, and carefully folded that thought and the whispers of others clawing at the back of his mind into a neat little square and locked it away. He’d made his choice a long time ago, it was too late to go back now.

There was no point in worrying about the body. He’d let the agent stationed here know and they’d see to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. i haven't written fanfic in almost 2 years can you believe  
> 2\. but anyway i am almost always about elbow-deep in the stars wars and i loved rogue one i loved those crazy kdis  
> 3\. i can't believe they're so Alive and Well and i wrote this awful au  
> 4\. can you believe that jyn and cassian i literally space's otp?  
> 5\. per usual, this is all the twitter's crew fault they know who they are


	2. ii.

“Where have you been?”

Jyn jolted, but only because she knew Krennic would want to her. She’d known he was coming. It was like clockwork. She didn’t even both sealing her door anymore. It would make him suspicious and he had the clearance codes anyway—and had made it very clear he’d use them whenever he wanted.

“Taking a nap,” Jyn said and turned. She’d changed out of the clothes she’d worn to Nar Shadaa, stowed them, and changed back into the loose pants and tunic—all in Imperial grey—that Krennic insisted she wore. It was about a size too big and made her look smaller than she was, a child wearing an adult’s clothing. “I finished the reports early.”

That was true. She wasn’t going to risk lying to him. Instead, days before meeting Cassian, she’d forgo sleep to make sure the data input was complete before she slipped out.

He came into the room, unhooking his cape from his shoulders, placing it neatly over the chair at her desk. Jyn only just stopped herself from tensing, hating that display of casual intimately. That was why he did, she knew. Every single act Krennic did around her was designed to show her how little power she truly had.

“We’ll begin a test run in a week. Would you like to come with me?”

It didn’t matter what she liked. It mattered what he wanted to hear. “Yes.”

 _This is a game_ , Jyn, he’d told her once when she’d been seven, when he’d been the only person she’d ever known, when her entire world had been a square-shaped room on some Imperial base whose name she couldn’t remember, _and the only way for you to win is to do exactly what I say._ And to prove his point he’d put an electro-blade against her skin and turned it on. Not even to cause permanent damage, but enough for her to scream and enough to shatter the illusion that he was anything except exactly what he was—a monster from her nightmares.

He was close enough now to reach out and lay a hand across her cheek. Jyn struggled not to wince or flinch away. He hadn’t hurt her in years, not since she’d learned bow to every demand even as she seethed, and he’d never touched her beyond this fatherly caress, but the promise of something worse always lingered and she thought he enjoyed keeping her on that razor-edge of uncertainty, making her jump at shadows, skittish as a tauntaun, more than following through.

“Moff Tarkin will be there. So you’ll have to play very nice.”

“I can play nice.” His fingers splayed over her cheek, thumb moving over her lips, and Jyn squeezed her eyes and went somewhere else—except, this time, of thinking of some far planet where no one could find her she thought… of Cassian, his steady eyes and steady hands. He was a spy. He must have played a hundred different roles, been a hundred different people, and maybe she didn’t even know the real him, maybe the Cassian she met was just another mask, but the idea that he’d swallowed distaste and do the job made her feel… less alone, somehow. Connected to something beyond the little prison Krennic had built around her.

“I know you can. I’m glad you’ve grown out of the teenage rebellion. I did hate hurting you.” That was a lie and they both knew it. Jyn’s earliest memory is that twisted smile on his face while she cried. Krennic dropped his hand. “Perhaps afterward we’ll go somewhere. I know that Eadu’s weather doesn’t suit you.”

It wouldn’t matter where she was, what the weather was like, because he’d be there, chewing at the edges of her sanity, unraveling every good thing she’d ever had. “I like the work.”

What she did on Eadu wasn’t anything important, just monitoring transmissions and handling issues Krennic deemed too unimportant for his attention, but it did give her high-level clearance. She’d given Krennic exactly what he’d craved from her, submission and obedience, and his arrogance blinded him to her quieter rebellion. A sympathetic Imperial technician deleted records of her flights to Nar Shadaa, thinking she needed to unwind at one of the gambling tables, but if Krennic had thought to closely… he’d find out.

She had to make sure he never did, not until she was long gone, until she was someplace he’d never find her ever again.

“I’m glad to hear that. I’d hate to think you were doing something you didn’t enjoy.”

She swallowed bile. “I know that.” She made a show of yawning behind her hand. “I think I’m going to go to bed, if that’s alright?”

“Of course.”

Well used to his gaze, even if it still made her skin crawl, Jyn stepped into the small fresher and changing into a sleep tunic. Krennic said nothing, just watched as she crawled into bed and pulled the covered up to her chin, hiding her balled, angry fists. For one burning, wondering moment she allowed herself to imagine something other than escape. She imagined pummeling that smug, smiling face until she could feel blood and bone beneath her knuckles, hear the crunch, and it made her smile.

“Goodnight.”

 

“I really think you should start taking me with you.”

“Kaytoo, you’re an Imperial droid. You’d be a little noticeable walking up and down Nar Shadaa.”

“I wouldn’t walk ‘up and down’. I’d stay very close to you.”

Cassian glanced over at the towering droid, into that unblinking gaze. His less kind peers would have suggested attributing any emotion to that blank, metallic face was the sign of too much isolation but… Cassian always imagined he could make inflections in Kaytoo’s voice. For example, now, exasperation. “How does that make it better?”

“For starters, the likelihood of you getting shot decreases by fifteen percent.”

“Only fifteen? We can talk when it’s thirty.”

“It _would_ be thirty except I had to factor in the probability of your propensity for making people want to shoot you.”

“No one wants to shoot me.”

Silence from the droid.

“Who wants to shoot me?”

“General Draven wants to speak to you about the information you brought in,” Kaytoo continued, as if Cassian hadn’t spoken. “He insisted on the meeting as soon as you landed, but _I_ insisted you be allowed a ‘fresher first because, as I pointed out to the general, you’re always in a foul mood after meeting the Eadu informant.”

Cassian grumbled, but wasn’t able to argue the point. His entire life was about lying to people, so he’d made a promise that he would at least be honest with himself, the only person he could be truthful with. Which meant owning up to the fact that—yes, meetings with Jyn always left him on edge, with pent-up aggression making his blood feel too hot and thick in his veins. He wasn’t frustrated enough to start looking for ways to relive it. Yet.

“They’re waiting for you in the war room.”

Cassian had been dreaming about his thin, military-grade cot and fifteen hours of straight sleep but he shrugged back into his jacket. “Stay here.”

“Where else would I go?”

Yavin IV was always a whirl of activity, senators and supporters and soldiers buzzing around the hastily cobbled together structures, nestled and hidden beneath the thick forests and tall ziggurats of eras past. Ashoka Tano had told him once that she didn’t like being here, that strength of the Force here made her uncomfortable, and she’d warned the entire base not to go poking around the old monoliths—though she wouldn’t say why; she and Jarrus were the only “Jedi” Cassian had ever known, so it wasn’t likely he’d ever find out. It didn’t bother Cassian. He had no time or patience for the Force. He couldn’t deny it existed—he’d been perched on a roof with a sniper rifle once and watched Tano caught down men like cloth, her white lightsabers blurring the air like streaks of lightning and had been a little bit in love—but what good was the Force if it couldn’t hold back the tide of the Empire?

 _Have faith_ , Tano had to him once, the last time he had seen her, and Cassian had struggled not to hunch his shoulders defensively. Faith got him nowhere. Action and caution and perseverance did.

General Draven was bent over the center command console in the war room, furiously punching in information. From the miniature holos and small, burst-sized flashes of light Cassian knew he was running missions, cataloguing failures. He was always doing that. Most days Cassian liked Draven. He’d asked Cassian to cross any line he’d drawn in the sand, compromise any moral he’d ever had, but the man asked Cassian to do nothing he wouldn’t do.

This rebellion had been built on hope, by senators with more optimism than skill, but the war would be won by man like Draven, hard and practical and pragmatic. Who looked at victory and knew it would be achieved by sacrifice, by death, and decided what were acceptable losses.

And, for the most part unless the mission was deemed important enough for Draven to directly involve himself, he was content to give Cassian mission parameters and leave it to him to figure out how to do it. Cassian was an intelligence _captain_ and considering the shelf-life of spies, that was about as high up the ranks as anyone would get, and even that was because Draven had wanted Cassian to have the mobility he needed to complete jobs.

“Sir.” Cassian saluted, because Draven would want him to. Cassian had grown up among Separatist, firebrand extremists who hadn’t really had the time to form up a military hierarchy, but Draven was a Republic man through and through and expected it. So Cassian did it.

“At ease.” Draven pushed away from the console. “We need to speak with you.”

He’d noticed the two senators speaking quietly in the back of the room, because he noticed everything when he entered a room, a habit he couldn’t kick even if he wanted to, and acknowledge them with a nod.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve heard whispers of an Empire superweapon,” Mon Mothma said with preamble, her calm belying the tension around her eyes. “But this is the first true confirmation we have of it.”

“It’s just chatter,” Cassian said, but swallowed. “But yes—I believe the information is accurate.”

“It’s not enough,” said the other senator. Bail Organa, of Alderaan. Of the Alliance’s official command, Cassian like the two of them the best. They were straightforward, played no games, and were dedicated to the cause—though that was probably surprise, considering that they had been the two to cradle the Alliance in its infancy, when the Empire had only been a looming shadow and no one had _truly_ known what would happen. “If we bring this to the Alliance now they’ll either dismissive it or go to ground.”

“I’ve pressed my informant to bring in my solid evidence.”

“Will she?” Mon Mothma wondered. Her doubt shouldn’t have felt insulting—they all, Cassian included, had their reservations about Jyn’s reliability—but his shoulders stiffened, his throat going tight with the need to _defend._ “That would be placing her in a great deal more danger than just being caught in a Nar Shadaa cantina.”

Cassian didn’t think so, but there was no point mentioning that. “She said she would and she’s never come to me empty-handed before.”

“What’s her price?” That was from Draven, who’d been the loudest grumbling about keeping Jyn on Cassian’s payroll.

“She’d doubling it.”

Draven snorted and Organa and Mon Mothma shared a look. It wouldn’t happen, but they could no longer play nice or fair. Not with an Imperial looking to get rich.

“Tell her what she needs to hear,” Organa told him. “So long as she brings the plans in, that’s what matters.”

“And there’s something else, Captain Andor,” Mon Mothma added. “This also confirms that it’s Galen Erso working on the project.”

Cassian only had a vague concept of who Galen Erso was—top Republic scientist, turned Imperial researcher, disappeared for a few years in the early days of the Empire, than popped up as a head of engineering on Eadu.

“You knew him?”

“Not well, but he’s one of the most brilliant minds of his time. If he’s building a star killer for the Empire than you can be assured it will _kill stars_.”

That level of destruction, in the Empire’s hand. It didn’t warrant thinking about. “You want Erso.”

“This isn’t the only project he’s been involved with in the fifteen years since he’s emerged as the Empire’s top scientist. He’s already cost the Alliance countless lives,” Organa said.

“He needs to be brought before the Galactic Senate and made to answer for those crimes,” Mon Mothma added. “More than that, if he can confirm that the Empire is building such a weapon it would through the Senate into open rebellion, bring more support to our side.”

“He’ll know the inner workings of the weapon as well, it’s weakness and its strengths,” Organa pointed out, always more concerned with victory over justice. “This shouldn’t be taken as anything less than an outright declaration of war against the Alliance. The Empire means to destroy us in one swoop.”

The clench of muscles in Cassian’s gut was many things—fear, dread, an ominous foreboding but excitement, too. He was a man of action, as often as his job was a slow, uphill climb. The promise of doing something was like a electric shock.

“You want Galen Erso.” It wasn’t a guess. He’d been doing this line enough to see exactly where it was going.

Organa nodded, brow furrowed, knowing what he was about to ask Cassian to do was next to impossible. “And we need you to get your informant to bring him to us.”

 

Moff Tarkin arrived with as much fanfare as one would expect, the entire Eadu base becoming a twirl of angry, buzing activity. Krennic, who liked to have Jyn follow him around like a little shadow, had to quietly shuffle her off and assign her a watch duty on the other end of the base. Moff Tarkin had never spoken to Jyn personally, but she knew the man didn’t like her—or didn’t approve of the way Krennic kept her so close. If nothing, the man adhered to Imperial hierarchy and Jyn lived in a limbo state of nonexistence.

When she had been small and first came to Eadu she had fluttered around the base like a nervous najoon, jumping at every sound, skittering into any dark corner she could find at the first sign of trouble, first sign of Krennic’s displeasure. But she’d quickly learned the trick to not be noticed was not appear frightened.

No one questioned her as she ambled her way down to Gale Erso’s lab. She walked a pace that was not too fast and not to slow, a woman who knew where she needed to go but wasn’t running late to get there. A trooper even moved out of her way when they crossed path.

Eadu was a dark planet, and if it wasn’t raining it was drizzling, a constant mist of cold wet. Between the weather and the craggy cliffs that that base had been built between, it was the perfect place to build a star killer. No one would think to look here.

But Galen Erso’s lab was sunny and bright, an artificial sun crafted to raise on a glass wall in a cloudless, blue sky. It was so pristine and white that Jyn had to squint her eyes for a for moments they adjusted. She’d only ever been here once or twice, and always with Krennic. He’d made a point of showing her what would happen if she was caught coming alone, holding her hand over a superheated laser that had been tasked with carving out the initial durasteel frame. Jyn had thought, for one horrific moment, she would really lose the hand until Erso had snapped that he was distracting him from work.

That was why her heart pounded. Krennic had drilled fear of him into so effectively that even when he wasn’t there she was constantly glancing over her shoulder when she did something she knew he wouldn’t approve of, already braced for the blow.

The back wall was lined with a towering row of consoles on a raised platform. She’d seen some of scientists pouring over algorithms and equations. It was the best place to start.

The lab was quiet, the entire team gone to greet Moff Tarkin. Jyn reasoned she had about twenty minutes to do a precursory scan and get back before anyone realized she’d run off. Of course, the consoles needed full-DNA scans in order to access, but Jyn knew how to work around that, and was already crouching to slip under the console and yank at its guts.

“Jyn?”

She came up hard, pivoting on her heel, and stared breathless and wide-eyed into Galen Erso’s face. He’d always looked tired to her, his shoulders sagged as if he carried some impossible weight, but he had a calm, steady gaze that made her feel oddly comforted.

“Oh, sorry—I—sorry.” She scrambled for an excuse, why he would find her in this lab, poking at data, and landed on, “Krennic sent me. He wanted… some blueprints.”

“We don’t keep them here,” Erso pointed out. “They’re below, in the mainframe vault.”

“Ah. Of course.” Her fingers didn’t seem to know what to do, even as she told herself to stop _looking_ so guilty, so nervous. She wiped her sweaty palms on her pants. Being around Erso made her nervous, not only because she was trying to steal from him. It was something instinctual, something that made her want to break down and cry whenever she looked at him, and that frightened her. She learned long ago to hide vulnerabilities. “I’ll go… tell him that.”

“Jyn.” It seemed like it was ripped out of him, some need to keep her from leaving. Jyn forced herself to meet his eyes, without fear, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “You have to be careful.”

“Careful?” She parroted. “Why?”

Erso only shook his head. “It isn’t safe,” he insisted.

Jyn’s eyes narrowed, and flickered upward, a subtler reminder that the Empire had eyes and ears everywhere. She didn’t what he was warning her about, if he suspected her and was moved by some form of compassion, but looking at him, her heart beating so loudly and not knowing why, she felt irrationally angry. At him.

“What does a law-abiding Imperial citizen have to fear from the Empire?” she demanded, harshly. The trapped, rapid beat of her heart reminded her that Erso couldn’t be trusted. That he’d _built_ whatever it was Krennic was salivating over.

“Nothing,” Erso said, still so gentle.

It made Jyn’s shoulders hunch. “I have to get back,” she insisted. _Had to get away_ , is what she meant.

“You should know, if you’re looking for those blueprints, the only people who can access it or Kennic and myself. No one else has security clearance. The only keys to the vault are carried by him and myself.” Erso fished a slim, little black cylinder from his lab coat pocket. “It’s the only way in or out.”

“Oh.” That she _hadn’t_ know.

“So you see? Everything is safe and sound for when Director Krennic leaves with Moff Tarkin tomorrow. You ought to get back.” Erso turned, making a show of returning the key back to his pocket, and said nothing as it hit the floor with a soft _tink! tink!_

Jyn stared, breathless and mistrusting, but Erso busied himself with the console, the display holo flaring up in the center, illuminating the sun-bright room in brilliant hues of blues and greens. She waited one beat, another. Erso said nothing.

She pocketed the key and was out the door before he turned back around.

 

_Jyn never thinks of him as ‘papa’. Something won’t let her form the words, not when she’s looking at him, not when she’s talking to him. She’s six, and learned to call this room home. Sometimes the man in white visits, usually with a gift, and Jyn is always happy to see him. He is the only one she sees, outside the droids that come in and routinely check on her. Below her, she can watch the skyscape of Coruscant but she never sees people, only the whizzing by of busy traffic._

_She’s alone. Sometimes she feels like the only person in the world._

_The memory of beating her fists bloody against the clear glass has faded, washed away like the smear of blood she’d left. She only has a vague remembrance of a woman’s soft voice and soft hands, stroking her hair, promising her everything will be alright—you mustn’t make a sound, Jyn._

_The man in white visits her today and meets her sunny smile with one of his own, motioning her toward him with a flick of her wrist. Jyn goes, trusting and needing the human contact he provides. She wants to weep when she feels his hand on her cheek, caressing and gentle, she is so grateful._

_“Would you like to go outside, Jyn?” the man in white, whose name he will tell her is Krennic and she must always call him that or ‘sir’, never anything else, asks._

_“Outside?” A foreign concept. The idea of stepping out into the light, into the buzzing traffic, makes her tremble._

_“Yes, Jyn. Outside. You can come with me now. I think you’re ready.”_

_She resists at first, but the man in white’s tug is insistent, and makes it very clear she does not have a choice. She clings to his hand and shivers against him, her only anchor in a storm, as they stand on the landing pad and wait for the ship that will take her far, far away. He smiles down at her, pleased with her, and Jyn tries to smile back—wants to smile back—but a gust of hard, bellowing wind knocks into her and she has to lock her arms around the man in white’s waist, face buried against his hip._

_The man in white laughs, as if it’s funny when it isn’t, and picks her up. He’s strong but her comfort is tainted by a strange, animal-like fear. Something telling her to run. Run! But she holds him tight by the neck. There is nowhere else to go._

 

Jyn knew Krennic had been in her room the moment the door slid aside. She could smell him, like something rotten had been sterilized and disinfected. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. Krennic come and go as he pleased, breached her privacy, and no one would stop him.

But he was gone now, at least, and she locked the door behind her—a futile gesture that made her feel better.

She collapsed onto the bed, eyes closing, and allowed her hand slip beneath her shirt to clutch at her only real possession—a jagged crystal held by a thin leather strap. It had been hers since… since she could remember. Krennic hadn’t given it to her, she knew that. She’d remember that and it wouldn’t feel like hers if he had, but it’s origins were a mystery, wrapped in the foggy distortion of childhood memories.

_Trust in the force, Jyn._

She frowned and worried the crystal, rubbing her thumb over its familiar edges. She’d never shown it to anyone, but she knew it was a kyber crystal from her work on Eadu. A stone that had once powered Jedi lightsabers.

But, more important, it was proof that Jyn didn’t come from _nowhere_ , that she wasn’t Krennic’s creation. That she’d had a mother, a father, somewhere. When she’d been younger it had been the only thought that had kept her from her buckling underneath Krennic’s touch. Instead she buried her defiance, nurtured it like a dying flame.

Her legs tucked up close to her chest, her fingers fisted so tightly around the crystal she could feel the skin of her palm tearing. The keycard she’d pocketed felt like it a piece of durasteel, a dead weight against her side. Krennic and Moff Tarkin were leaving tomorrow—some sort of test run—and it would be her only chance to go down and lift what plans and blueprints she could. And then she’d hand deliver them to Cassian and she would… she didn’t know. The idea of being free was a startling concept, one that made her heart pound so fiercely she couldn’t catch her breath. What did it mean? What would she do? The possibility did not comfort her. She wanted to curl up on her covers and close her eyes.

She thought of Cassian, so calm and cool. He’d never spoken of other jobs, other missions, but she knew he’d been on them. He had the tired eyes of someone who’d been fighting his whole life. Beneath those fatigues and loose shirts, she knew she’d find scars, vibro-knives and blaster scars and deaths barely escaped. She could imagine running her fingers over each one and touching his history, knowing his violence, living in it.

A man who fought, not because he had to but because he chose to. She thought of what he would do and knew he wouldn’t hesitate. Wouldn’t sit in the dark trembling at the idea of Krennic and she was jealous and breathless and awestruck at the idea of it.

Jyn pressed her lips together, picturing Cassian’s solemn face and what he’d say when she handed him the star-killer plans, her end of the bargain kept. Quieter, at the very back of her mind, she pictured sitting in some dark corner with him somewhere, his hands on her face, stroking her cheeks—a touch he wanted to give and a touch she wanted to receive. Silly, useless fantasy but here, in the dark, a nice one, a warm one. One that made her eyes close and her free hand stroke the flat plane of her stomach and then, lower. 

And maybe Cassian would be annoyed with an Imperial informant thinking about taking off his clothes and pressing her mouth to his and his hands moving over her, quick and confident and knowing where to touch her, but that didn’t matter in the private corners of her mind. She could give herself this, another a little gift to lock away in her mind like a hidden treasure. No one would have to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. so it's definitely going to be more than 3 chapters  
> 2\. 3 chapters was really just a placeholder i lied  
> 3\. this story will earn it's e rating you'll see  
> 4\. in fact you'll see in the next chapter  
> 5\. anyway i love jyn and cassian and the whole rogue one crew i'm so glad they're alive and well in the canon


	3. iii.

It was a bad idea.

“She wants to meet. Now.”

“Now?”

Bodhi nodded, looking ready to bolt. He always looked ready to bolt and Cassian supposed he couldn’t blame him. Bodhi had been ferrying information to the Alliance for almost two years now, but no one was willing to let him forget that he’d been Imperial first. It was a testament to the man’s dedication that he took it in stride, kept his head down, and kept coming back for more.

Whatever he’d seen, whatever he’d done, for the Empire had sent him hurtling to the Alliance and now he fell under Cassian’s purview. Not one of Cassian’s agents, exactly. Cassian ranked as _captain_ but he didn’t really have anyone who answered directly to him—and he preferred it that way—but more often than not Cassian was the one Bodhi touched base with, made reports to, sought advice from.

Especially since Jyn had become one of his informants.

He hadn’t expected Jyn to be ready to meet so soon. They usually went weeks between meet ups on Nar Shadaa—Cassian filling his days with other threads to follow, small missions, stake outs, each one feel more and more like filling, each other just another hurtle to get over until he could get back to Jyn.

“She says it has to be now. Krennic is off-planet with Moff Tarkin. She can get away now, but once he comes back the entire base will be on lockdown.” Bodhi unfurled his hand, palms splayed. “She says it’s now or never.”

Cassian frowned. He didn’t like ultimatums, especially from his informants, but Jyn’s insistence could be understood. He had other eyes and ears on Krennic—really nothing more than a middle man with powerful ambitions—and had already received word he’d gone off-world.

He ran his tongue over his teeth, feeling that familiar burn of excitement. He’d been camped out on Yavin for too long, days too long. He was ready for action. And Jyn always brought him action.

Kaytoo, who’d been watching from where he’d been running calibrations on Cassian’s ship, asked, “Can I—”

“No.”

If the droid had been capable of huffing, Cassian had no doubt he would have. “You’re awfully possessive of that Imperial informant.”

A long stretch of silence, the look from Bodhi as unreadable as Kaytoo’s impassive face. Cassian wasn’t foolish to say anything. Acknowledging something gave it it’s power. He merely shrugged. “Alright. Arrangement a meeting with her. Tell her the same as last time.”

He forwarded the information to Draven. Technically, Draven had given Cassian permission to come and go as he pleased—sometimes he needed to out in a moment’s notice, didn’t have time to wait around for approval; information was a tenacious and slippery thing and more often than not if Cassian to reach out and grasp it faded like smoke—but if he could he liked to follow standard procedure.

Draven deemed it important enough to meet him on the landing pad.

“Jyn might not be exactly receptive to the idea of smuggling out an Imperial scientist,” Cassian warned, the first time in recent memory he had truly said something without thought. Twenty years tirelessly working for Alliance intelligence had taught him to measure every word, every subtle movement of his body.

“You’ll convince her.” It wasn’t a request. “But there’s something else, Captain Andor.”

Cassian waited. Always better to let others do the talking.

Draven ushered him toward a darkened niche where they were less likely to be overhead. Draven was smart enough to know to stand casually, as if they were having a simple conversation. “It’s about Galen Erso.”

Cassian nodded.

“I’ve been—not hunting, exactly—but keeping my ear to the ground. Organa wasn’t wrong. Erso’s cost the lives of countless Alliance soldiers. Good men and women.” He could see the moment Draven made his decision. “Too dangerous to let live.”

This wasn’t the first-time Draven had issued down this order. Cassian was whatever the Alliance needed him to be—spy, soldier, pilot, and occasionally an assassin.

“Get the girl to bring him in,” Draven said. “But don’t bring him in alive.”

Cassian nodded, a quick jerk of his chin. There was nothing to say. They both knew winning meant making hard choices. “And the girl?” He swallowed back the strange taste of bile on his tongue, the muscles in his stomach clenching.

“She doesn’t know enough to pose a danger to the Alliance,” Draven said. “I’ll leave it up to your discretion what to do with her.”

But her demands would not be met—they had neither the funds nor the manpower. Cassian didn’t like loose ends, always made sure to burn his bridges when informants hit a wall, and leaving Jyn was as good as killing her. The Empire would hunt her down, torture her for information she didn’t have, and then… dispose of her.

His jaw locked. “Understood.”

 

_She was being followed._

Jyn’s instincts had been honed through twenty-one years of always looking over her shoulder, of knowing when Krennic was watching her and when he wasn’t. Anyone could become good at something when their survival depended on it, and she’d once fancied herself have a Jedi-level sense of awareness.

A prickling on the back of her neck. Another person might have ignored it, shaken it off, or turned around to try to find the source of their discomfort. Jyn only tucked her hands into her pockets and turned a corner.

There was a neon-bright display, a smiling tortuga in a sheer bikini urging Nar Shadaa visitors to try their luck at _Club Vortex_ , and Jyn slowed her steps, not noticeable but as if she was taking a moment to listen, as if she was one of those idiots who would waste her hard-earned credits at sabaac tables. Between the roll from ad to the next the screen was dark. Only for a second, really, but it was enough.

A man, wiry and tall, about twenty feet back. He wore a lose jacket and dark visors. No one would have pegged him for her tail, if she had a tail, but Jyn knew. She _sensed_ it. He’d been following her since she had landed, probably right out of the spaceport, and had been keeping a safe distance, never far enough to lose sight of her.

Jyn swallowed, but made sure her feet fell even and unhurried, nothing to hint at the sudden riot of panic throbbing at the back of her eyes. Her eyes darted around, looking for anyway to lose her tail. She couldn’t let them see her go into the cantina, lead them to Cassian—

A hand at her elbow Jyn struggled not to tense, but did anyway when the voice, hot and familiar, whispered against her ear, “You’ve got a shadow.”

Cassian pulled her along, pressed to the line of his body, so they appeared as nothing more than a couple ambling down Nar Shadaa’s red-drenched streets. Jyn curled her hand in his belt to complete the façade.

“I know that,” Jyn hissed. “How did you—” She stopped, feeling stupid. _Of course_ , he had someone watching the spaceport for her, knew when she landed. She caught a few people watching her when she stepped off the shuttle, but no more than precursory glance, and then she’d never been followed when she left. But, of course, Cassian kept watch for her. He didn’t trust her.

The hurt was stupid, but it was there.

“Left.” Cassian’s grip on her elbow was tight, not enough to fell threatening, but enough to let her know that she wasn’t going to have the opportunity to bolt—which she had intended to do—that she was going to have play things _his_ way.

Another man, ostentatiously bopping his head to music pumping in throw a heavy set of headphones, suddenly came to his feet. He followed them at an ambling pace, nearly unnoticeable in the crush of people, but Jyn knew it in the careful way he walked, the way his long legs couldn’t quiet hid their military-stiff straightness. She’d grown up on military bases. She knew what military training looked like.

Judging by the Cassian’s arm tightened he saw it. He turned them down an alley with a dead end.

“What are you—”

“We need to get rid of them.”

 _Get rid of them._ Jyn swallowed. They had other terms for it in Imperial space but she knew, and had seen, what _getting rid of someone_ met. Krennic didn’t like to bloody his hands, liked to dole out orders and see them carried out, liked see the proof of his power, liked to make Jyn see it. She’d sat through enough interrogation of Empire enemies to no longer hear their screams in her head, enough that the sounds and the smells had become a dull ache, an old wound healed over. She might have felt guilty about it, if she had room for anything other than driving need to survive.

“Stay behind me,” Cassian started.

She snorted. “I know how to fight.” Krennic had thought it would be an amusing punishment, to watch her get grinded into the dirt in an Imperial boot camp, but she’d excelled at it, learning how to use her small size to her advantage, proved herself to be a vicious scrapper. She’d made the mistake of appearing to enjoy it and the training had been abruptly canceled but whenever Jyn had a moment she slip away she’d go through her rounds, keep her body in shape.

“Hey!” This from the man who’d followed her out of the spaceport called. “Hey, stop for a minute.”

Cassian slowed, but didn’t fully stop, urging Jyn in front of him. “We’re in a hurry.”

“To get to the dead end?” The second voice, the one who’d been hanging out on the street. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to the girl, not you.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Jyn said before Cassian could think something up.

Cassian shifted, but couldn’t stop block the hand that grasped for Jyn in time. Jyn reacted, hand shooting up and caught the first man in the nose. She felt it, the brunch of bone, the hot splatter of blood, and the man cursed, rocking backward.

“Bitch!”

This time Cassian had enough time, pivoting forward on one foot, meeting the second man halfway and plowing him back against wall, arm to his throat. There was nothing elegant or graceful about his movements, everything was done with quick military efficiency. No wasted energy, no fairy tale Jedi polish. Just a determination to end the fight as quickly as possible. And the minute he had the man pinned he turned to check on the second but he didn’t need to, Jyn was taking care of it, catching him by his wrist and twisting it to the small of his back. He cursed at, tried to break her hold and backhand her, but Jyn anticipated it and kicked at his knees. He went to the ground in a yelp, face pressed into the grimy floor, Jyn’s knee pressed against his neck.

When she looked at Cassian she thought there was something akin to admiration in his eyes, something close to approval, and it caused something bright and hot and dangerous to bloom in her chest, something refused to be squashed or banked. _No one_ had ever looked at her like that.

“What do you want?” Cassian demanded of the man he’d pinned.

“The girl,” the man said, spitting at Jyn. Cassian reared his head back and smacked it against wall. “The girl! We worked on Eadu—on the engines—we thought—we’ve seen her before and we wanted—”

Jyn didn’t recognize them, but so many people came and went on Eadu it was possible. They were just bottom-feeders, looking to make some side credits. The idea that they would told Krennic about her trips to Nar Shadaa, without even realizing exactly _what_ they were selling, sent a chill racing up her arms. She could feel a cold sweat on her skin, a quiver in her stomach, and she wanted to run, to race back to Eadu and bury herself under her covers, close her eyes and wait for it to pass over, beg Krennic’s forgiveness if he knew, promise anything and—

She swallowed, hating herself, hating Krennic, hating her body’s traitorous reaction at the first sign of danger, of Krennic’s displeasure. Like an akk dog on a leash, she’d been taught she sit, stay, and heel at the first snap of fingers.

The man beneath cursed when her knee dug it.

“Jyn.” Cassian said, a warning, and it was enough, somehow. She pulled herself back, off the precipice, out of the terror, her lungs burning, and watched as Cassian pulled the man’s head back by his neck and smacked the back of his against the wall, and again, until he slid limply to the floor.

Jyn copied him, with far less finesse, wincing at the sound of his nose breaking. When he finally stilled she rolled him to his side, not sure he would be able to breathe, not sure if she should care, caught in some halfway numb limbo of horror and anger.

Behind her she could hear Cassian giving directions to someone, speaking lowly into the comm-link at his wrist. “Imperial. Not spies, no. They were imperial, but they weren’t looking for us. They were just looking to sell information. Yes. Clean-up.”

She glanced up at him, at his calm steady eyes, and envied him that centeredness he had, that coolness, wondering how many times he’d done this—how many alleys there’d been, how many close calls, how many bodies.

But he was looking down at her, dark eyes unreadable, and then held out his hand.

“Come.”

It was a wide hand, decorated with nicks and cuts, violence worn like badges of honor, a hand that was familiar with a blaster rifle, a vibro-knife, a hand that had killed. A hand that reached for her.

Breathless for one foolishly long moment, she grasped it.

 

Cassian couldn’t take her to the cantina. He couldn’t be sure if it was compromised. The two Imps that had followed them into the alleyway were just bottom-rung, looking to either move up or sell out, but he wouldn’t take the risk. If they’d recognized Jyn then…

He took her to the bolt-hole, floor scrubbed clean of Dells, scrubbed clean of his last visit, no hint of the violence he’d committed. He still felt strangely raw, exposed, having her here. It wasn’t a personal space, he’d left nothing of himself behind, but it crossed a line. The cantina was a controlled space, one of his making, where she was firmly placed in one spot and not allowed to move.

Now—now—he had her hand in his. He’d taken it without thinking about it, because she’d looked something like an angel, something like a small, lost girl. The instinct had been to snatch her, and he’d survived this long by listening to his instincts.

Her hand was small and delicate, a startlingly realization. He’d never considered the texture of Jyn's hand, hadn’t let himself consider it, but it was impossible not to now. Small, slender, easily breakable, but he could sense a tensile strength in them to. She’d handled her attacker in the alleyway with an ingrained power, unflinching resolve, and he hadn’t expected it.

He let her go the minute they stepped inside, fingers tingling.

“Why did you want to meet?”

Jyn dug into the pocket of her pants. They always appeared too sizes too big, swallowing her up.

“This is what I could get.” It was a paper-thin chip, so brittle that the slightest pressure from his fingers would shatter it.

They stored an extra datapad under the floorboards just in case. With Jyn’s eyes on his back he peeled away the loosened board, his skin stretched taut over his skin. He wanted her gone, he wanted her closer—he didn’t know what he wanted, and it been so long, too long, since he hadn’t had a crystal clear of idea of what he wanted. What he needed.

The datapad flared to life the minute he put in the little, unraveling three layers of blueprints, corridors and hallways stacking on top, circling a perfectly rounded shape, funneling toward a center point. But—

“This is only a skeletal outline,” he said. There were key elements missing, weaponry and power sources.

“It’s all they had stored up on Eadu. I think they took the full set with them when they went to do a field test.” Jyn crossed her arms over her chest, looking small and belligerent, looking ready for her a fight, her lips pressed together angrily. “Isn’t that enough.”

“No.” _He had a goddamn mission._ “You know how this works. We need something substantial. Something solid.”

“That’s all I could get,” Jyn hissed. She took a step forward, clipped and angry. He could practically feel it radiating off her, a brilliant supernova, pure and bright. How long had it been since he’d felt that, clean, open emotion? It had been… years since he’d felt anything but impotent frustration. Even his anger at the Empire banked, a dying ember being smothered by the rot of time. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No.” He had to push. Had to. He had orders. “If you want to continue to be useful to the Alliance, want our aid, then you need to give us something more. We want the full set of plans… we want Galen Erso.”

Jyn blinked at him. Blinked again. Then laughed, harshly. “I can’t exactly slip _Galen Erso_ in my pocket.”

He clasped his hands behind his back, fingers knotted and locked. “That’s what’s on the table. That’s what we’re offering.”

It was foolish that she looked hurt and betrayed, it was foolish that he could feel his throat tighten at that look. He could feel a strange, pinch in his chest, something contracted, a tight, hot ball that he had swallow and bury at the bottom of his stomach.

He could see Jyn’s mind working, her eyes wide and dark, her lips parted. They moved wordlessly for a moment, then two, and then, “ _You bastard._ ”

It was more muscle memory than a reaction, a conscious decision to defend himself. His body felt her movement, her sudden shift from hurt to rage, before he could even acknowledge her intentions. He caught the wrist she swung at him, shifted to avoid the boot she could have cracked against his shin. Jyn had training, and the will to put it to use, but Cassian had years and strength on her.

She hit the wall with a sound exhalation of air, rage and a tremble of hurt, and went still. Not because the fight was drained out of her, he could still feel it shimmering around her like a veil of steam, but like a defense mechanism, like an animal who knew when to play dead. He wondered why it made him feel angry, a low broil set in his stomach.

“How am I supposed to get them?” Jyn demanded. Her breath was warm, soft against his face.

“You’re… close to Krennic, aren’t you?” The words were bitter on his tongue. “Think of something.”

Something dangerous flashed in her eyes, something that told Cassian she’d really hurt him, given half the chance, and it was heady, intoxicating, seeing that raw, uninhibited emotion in her eyes. Her wrist rotated in his hand, not trying to escape, but he tightened his hand anyway, to hold her, to keep her against him, able to feel the delicate contours of her wrist bones.

“Some of us don’t have the luxury of only caring about ourselves, Jyn.” He spoke without thinking, driven by some animal need for her to understand, to impress on her why. “Some of us have to put others above ourselves. Some of us have to make hard choices.”

There it was again. A hint of hurt, a tremble of her lip, and then a hard, determined look in her eyes. “Then I’m upping my price,” Jyn snapped. “I don’t just want money. I want out. All the way. You make me disappear, somewhere the Rebellion or the Empire can’t touch me. Can’t find me. If I get you Galen Erso, you get this for me.”

It wasn’t going to happen, but of course if he told her that Jyn would slip between his fingers, unfathomable as a distance star. He had orders— _tell what she needs to hear, get what we need from her¬_ —he couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t lose her.

“I will.” He’d made a career out of lying, out of telling people what they wanted to hear without so much as blinking. Why this felt like a fist on his heart he didn’t know. “Get us Erso, and you’ll never see us again.”

She trembled, not in fear, in rage. It spread across him in a wave, hot and wild, burning through him, burning over him, until he felt like he was on fire. Her other hand lifted but he didn’t stop it. If she hit him, fine, maybe he deserved it, maybe he wanted her to, wanted to feel something real and solid after so long, but her hand curled across the back of his hand, nails biting in like he was danger of disappearing. He watched, he waited. In this moment, Cassian decided he would let her do whatever she wanted to do—because he wanted it to. How long had it been since he’d thought of himself as a single entity, something beyond the support to hold up the Rebellion, a gear in its ironwork heart? How long had he let himself want something, even if it was a selfish, greedy girl from the Empire. How long had it been since he had just _wanted?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. i don't really don't like this chapter but i am also tired of stressing about it so here you go  
> 2\. it's a little shorter than the other chapters but that's because of things  
> 3\. things that will f i n a l l y earn this fic it's explicit rating  
> 4\. your welcome  
> 5\. i'll try not to go as long between updates like i did this chapter but this is me so like  
> 6\. no promises


	4. iv.

Jyn gripped the back of his neck—she was angry, at him, at everything, and she was terrified and she was lonely. _So lonely._ She’d been alone her whole life, isolated one way or the other, trapped behind a glass wall Krennic had spent tireless years erecting around her. Reaching out to Cassian had created a fissure in it, a spiderweb break in that glass, and all she wanted to do was pound her fist against it until it shattered, no matter how badly the jagged edges would shred her.

Cassian shifted, trapping her between his body and the wall. She could feel him, alive and warm and whole, and thought—even if it was only for a moment, even if it was a lie—she’d take this and make it hers. Something that would be only hers, a small-scale rebellion, pressure on the fracturing glass.

And maybe, more than that, she just wanted to kiss Cassian. Who never disguised his disgust, but also made sure she had something to eat. Who never thought she _couldn’t_ do it, even if she didn’t want to—who looked at her and didn’t see some broken little toy Krennic had molded and shaped and whittled over the years, but her; someone who could fight and argue and laugh and lie. _A person._

He looked down at her, a quiet, strange heat in his eyes. She’d thought about kissing him before, mostly just to shock him, but now—now it became the sole, dominating thought in her mind. Kiss Cassian.

She tugged his mouth down. He might have said something, but she didn’t want to speak or think or do anything but kiss his solemn, grim mouth.

A small groan escaped him, filled her mouth, and she tasted him, strong caf and a rich, spicy flavor of a food she’d never tasted before. His hands dropped to her hips, kneading her skin through the heavy fabric of her pants. It had been so long, it had been a lifetime, since she had been touched like this. The last she’d let someone kiss her, an engineering assistant who’d been reassigned to Eadu, Krennic had found out—of course he’d found out—and had made Jyn watch while he ejected the boy into space.

She pushed the thoughts away, into a tightly sealed box at the very back of her mind. It was filled with memories of a similar nature. But Krennic wasn’t here, he couldn’t sour or ruin this. It was all hers.

_All mine._

With jerky, uncertain motions she yanked his shirt from his belt. She didn’t want to let him know that she didn’t know what she was doing, as if revealing that vulnerability would be one step too far, but Cassian caught her fingers and slid them upward, across the planes of his chest, over bunched, sinewy muscles, shirt going over his head. She could feel the scars marking him, a ropy one here, a puckered one there, a perfect starmap of his life—a man who fought and killed and hurt and protected where and when he needed, however he was needed. And she shuddered and wanted to pull that body close, leave some irrevocable imprint of herself on him. Something that was say: _Jyn was here. This is Jyn’s._ Because nothing had ever been hers and she’d never wanted something like she wanted Cassian Andor, grave and serious and heartbreakingly tender all at once.

When was the last time she had known something like this, simple human touch? Simple contact? When she’d wanted to be touched, instead of just flinching away.

His fingers tugged at her waist, as impatient and as jerky as she had been. She heard the metal hit the wall across from them as he flung her belt out of her loops and there was something about all this contained wildness in him… Cassian was trim and lean but he had such a strong _presence_ he always took up all the space in the room, all the air, but she never—never, never—ever truly thought he’d hurt her and despite every logical reason he shouldn’t he’d invoked a kind of instinctual trust. Maybe it was his eyes, when they had first met her and seen her, like he had stripped her bare and whispered _I’ll never hurt you._ He would, and he could, and yet… her mind and her heart clung to that, needed that. She’d been walking on an inch-wide bridge where one wrong step would send her plummeting into the dark and she’d learned not to count on anyone, or need anyone, but she could feel Cassian now, a hand on her elbow. He wouldn’t let her fall.

Cassian made a sound, half-curse, half-groan as she caught his mouth again. His hand slipped beneath the waistline of her pants and she jolted feeling his hot palm there, a cautious stroke on the tops of her thighs.

Then he knelt and she thought just to pull down her pants, but even after he’d helped her out of her boots and peeled off her pants he stayed there. His hand stroked the inside of her thigh, the feather-light touch making her quiver and gasp, and then with a more insistent press of his hand he lifted one of her legs and slung it over his shoulder.

He kissed the soft curve of her thigh, the rough bristle of hair making Jyn shudder. Her fingers sunk into his hair, tightened, to anchor herself because it felt like she’d float away any moment.

His fingers stroked her first, gentle and testing, making sure she wasn’t going to pull away. She was already wet—she had an embarrassing habit of _being_ wet whenever he was around—and she all but melted at the sound he made as he spread her and found her ready for him. At the first tentative sweep of his tongue on her folds Jyn had to shove a fist into her mouth to keep from screaming. Cassian’s free hand braced on the wall beside her hip and rubbed his thumb against her clit. She could feel his smile on her skin when she did scream but it didn’t matter because then his lips and tongue were moving on her again, teasing out her shudders and her cries, learning what she liked. Fast here, deep there, pressure now on her clit.

When he slid a finger inside her, gently widening her, preparing her even as his thumb pressed and rubbed at the hood of her sex, she clenched around him with a broken cry. He had a difficult time adding his second finger because she was coming—the first time she’d come with someone other than herself—with violent shudders, but he rode her through it, caressed her inside as she crested.

Cassian came to his feet and they both struggled to free him from his pants. He kissed her again, tongue sweeping passed her lips and sinking in, and she had the intriguing, erotic taste of her own arousal in her mouth.

He cupped her breasts, kneading them roughly through the fabric of her shirt they hadn’t managed to get off, and with a little hop she wound her legs around those lean, strong hips. He was strong enough to hold her, bracketed between him and the wall. _He wouldn’t let her fall._ Her necklace, and the serrated kyber crystal, slipped out of her collar, bouncing between them. Cassian blinked down at it, recognized it, and then suckled her collarbone where the thin rope rested.

The hot, thick column of his cock rubbed against her and Cassian released a low, hoarse moan that matched hers, the shock of what they were actually doing an electric shock. Nearly blind with desperate want, Jyn wrapped her fingers around him, thick and hard, big enough to make the muscles in her stomach clench. But she wasn’t going to stop now. The Empire could be kicking down the door and they would have to wait until she was finished with him.

He panted against her neck, licking and nibbling, as she rubbed him against her folds, making him slick, making her body weep with wants it had never really had before.

“Hurry,” Cassian panted harshly against her neck. His fingers bit into her hips, so hard that she was going to have bruises. “I can’t—”

Yes. She knew. She angled herself over him, brought heavy mushroomed head to her entrance—and he was thick and powerfully veined and so swollen, the smell of him and them making her head swim—and let gravity do the work for her.

She cried out, Cassian stilled, and the whole universe seemed to hold its breath for a moment. It hurt, and she’d expected that, but _still_ —the pain was like being splashed with cold water. Her body braced instinctively, wanting to push him out, but with the wall and the hard press of his body there was no way to, she was—for lack of a better word—pinned. Impaled. Stuffed full. And wiggling only made him slip in deeper.

Cassian’s heard jerk up, recognizing the sound she’d made, the tightness of her sex, for exactly what it was. His mouth feel up and he looked somewhere between angry and betrayed. “What the _fuck_ —”

Jyn didn’t want to talk about it. With him, or with anyone. She pressed her mouth to his, angry and full of teeth, and clenched around him tightly. This pain was nothing, this pain she chose—she’d spent her whole life under the thumb of Orson Krennic; this couldn’t even begin to compare—and Cassian’s body shook against her, hips jerking forward as if he couldn’t help himself. Jyn swallowed another cry, because it still hurt, but she wasn’t going to stop, wasn’t going to let anything stop her or this, and she grinded down on him, pushing through the pain. He felt big, too big, inside her, wedged so deep it felt like she could feel his heartbeat against her own. Tears prickled the corner of her eyes and she prayed he couldn’t see them, didn’t think she could stand it if he saw them, but then Cassian reached down and caressed her clit again, stroking her where they were joined, nudging her with small undulations of his hips until she grew wet again, until the pain faded, until she was digging her nails into his shoulders to try to get him to move.

His hips reared back and slammed into hers and there was a nova-burst of stars at the back of her eyes, but not from pain. She clung to him, legs locked tight and unrelenting at his waist, and cried out his name with each hard lunge, clawing and fighting for release. Cassian bit down her neck, his thumb pressing down on her clit with each powerful thrust of his hips, and Jyn felt her release, so strong and hot, that her toes curled, her body caving inward, her entire existence whittled down to the place where Cassian was buried deep and thick inside her.

Unable to stop herself, overcome with emotions she’d never wanted or let herself feel before, she kissed Cassian again. Not a hard kiss, or a hungry kiss. A gentle kiss, one that revealed too much, sweet and tender and raw. They were pressed so close she could feel the uneven edges of the kyber crystal rubbing between them, scrapping at Cassian’s chest. Cassian shuddered, whispered her name like a drowning man, and pulled her impossibly closer to him, until Jyn thought that their bodies would simply fuse together the way their hearts beat in tandem.

And then… her legs fell from his hips and she collapsed back against the wall. Cassian pushed away from her, stumbling on unsteady feet. The hollow silence between them was already filling up, with regrets and accusations and the hard, cold truth—in the end, all this was a means to an end, for him and for her.

Cassian was the first to speak. “Jyn—”

Her name on his lips felt like a punch to the gut. She couldn’t breathe, her lungs refusing to take in air, and the lack of oxygen made her heart feel like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand.

“Thanks for that.” Her voice was steady, years and years of practice from meeting Krennic’s eyes and telling him exactly what he wanted to hear even as her entire body quivered with revulsion. “I need to hop in the ‘fresher before I get back.”

It was the coward’s way out, but Jyn had never claimed to be brave.

 

In the cavernous silence, in the empty room that smelled like sex and Jyn, Cassian struggled to rearrange his thoughts. It had been years since he hadn’t been able to compartmentalize, step back and analysis without the distortion of emotion. Now, he couldn’t even seem to form words. The only thing he could up with was, _“Fuck.”_

It felt appropriate.

The ‘fresher started, filling up the silence with the sound of running water, and Cassian closed his eyes—thinking of Jyn, her lips swollen from his kiss, her body still marked by his mouth and the hard, insistent press of his hips. He’d been rough with her but it was thrilling to know that she could take it, she was the kind of girl who _liked_ rough, appreciated it—with other men he’d always tired so hard to be gentle and had held a vital part of himself back.

Impossible, to want her again, impossible for his body to be _capable_ of wanting her again but _force_ tell his cock that because it was hard, ready, and willing.

There’d been blood on her thighs, there was blood on his thighs, and when he first pressed his aching cock inside her—answering that animalistic need that had been clawing at his throat since he’d first seen her, Nar Shadaa lights playing in her hair—she’d cried out. And he knew what it meant.

A better man would have stopped. Would have pulled back. But she’d kissed him and clung to him like he was the only thing that mattered to her in the whole universe and no one had _ever_ looked at him like that, with such need, he hadn’t been able to.

It should change everything, but it changed nothing.

His fist hit the wall, the skin stretched over his knuckles ripping, and for the first time in his life the Alliance felt like a cage.

What could he say? _Sorry_ felt too much and not enough. He wouldn’t insult her by thinking she hadn’t known what she was doing, or what she wanted, but he _should_ have—

Cassian scrubbed a hand over his face and rearranged his clothes, trying to ignore that he could smell her, steel and thunderstorms and stardust, on his skin, taste her on his lips, his tongue swollen, his cock aching, every part of him still wanting, impossibly, against all logic. He folded Jyn’s pants neatly and left them on the counter for her.

He paced, for lack of anything better to do. He was used to this restless energy, this stunted, impotent urgency that left his body all but thrumming. The idea of Jyn in a shower was too much, too much to bear, thinking about water sluicing down the soft, sweet flesh he’d only had glimpses off. He’d never even gotten her naked and he felt the loss of it like an ache in his jaw. He was halfway toward the door to the ‘fresher, not even consciously aware of moving, until it opened and Jyn stepped out. Pink and fresh from her shower, her panties back on, her shirt back on, and everything in Cassian feeling it was breaking apart, splintering. He didn’t know what it was about this girl, and the way she looked at him with big, brown eyes from underneath her dark lashes, that made him want to go to his knees, but they were trembling.

He rubbed at his chest, at the little mark that crystal she was wearing had left on him. What the hell was she doing with a kyber crystal anyway? The Empire was fleecing them from Jedha, en masse and they couldn’t figure out why, but that didn’t explain why she would have one. Had Krennic given it to her?

“I want to talk.” His didn’t know where the words came from. They rumbled out. He didn’t even really want to talk, not really, not about this but he wanted to _say_ something.

“I don’t.” Jyn scooted around him, head dropping to her chest to make sure there was no chance of their eyes meeting, and went to grab at her pants.

That should be enough. Why did he feel all this _words_ clawing up his throat? Hot, sharp like jagged piece of glass.

“Jyn.” He gripped her elbow, forcing her to turn. She hadn’t tucked her necklace back beneath her shirt and, since Cassian had never seen it before, he wondered if she even realized that it was out still. There was something about that, that she didn’t seem to care that she was exposed. He’d tried to pretend for months that he didn’t want to unravel her, learn the ins and outs of her, that she hadn’t become a dangerous obsession he couldn’t afford—but there was no lying to himself now, not with the sound of her cries of pleasure still ringing in his ears, not when he knew what Jyn looked like, wet and willing and something close to _his_.

She still wouldn’t look at him. He shouldn’t be this cruel, he should let her have this, a moment to slip back behind her walls and her defenses. But there was no walls for him, not now, no place for him to hide and he was selfish enough not to want to give her the chance.

He caught her face, lifted it, felt her sharp intake of breath, her body braced. He would back off, let her go— _told_ himself he would have, tried to believe it—if he sensed an ounce of fear. Cassian had no trouble pushing or cajoling as the situation called for it, and force knew he’d pushed Jyn tonight, and he’d intimated and frightened and tortured and _killed_ when he had but… hurting her would be like severing off a vital part of him.

But she was swaying toward him, leaning toward him, pulled forward by some invisible thread that he could feel too, an insistent tugging at his middle. Bound, irrevocably. “It doesn’t change anything.”

No. It didn’t. Sex didn’t change a damn thing. Cassian knew sex when it was a pleasure and sex when it was a job and this… he didn’t know where this fell. She was a mark and he’d never come for anyone like he’d come for her and she’d never had another man in her body except for him.

He felt sick. He felt a cold sweat on his neck. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to grab her and tell her this changes everything and if it hadn’t been for Empires and rebellions and dead parents and a hundred other things that might have been a possibility—not because she’d been virgin, because that didn’t matter, not really but because he sensed with a sickening dread that he’d been wrong just about everything.

_It doesn’t change anything._

“Are you good to head back?” he asked instead.

She jerked her chin away, every part of her going stiff. “Promise me. Promise me that if I do this you’ll get me out. I want some little nowhere planet where the Empire can’t ever find me. Where the _Alliance_ can’t bother me. And I don’t want to hear another word about rebellions and Jedi and war. _Promise._ ”

She’d never asked him for a promise before. Promise implied trust, a belief that he would come through. Half now, half later—their standard procedure—kept things exactly where they should have stayed, professional, detached, two people who knew they couldn’t trust the other.

_Promise me _, she said.__

__He dropped his hand to her necklace and Jyn jolted like someone had taken a brand to her. Her hand clawed up to his, gripping it, like she wanted to pry his fingers away. But she didn’t._ _

__“I promise.”_ _

__And the first time who knew how many _kriffing_ years it didn’t taste bitter like a lie on his tongue. He’d compromised ever moral he’d ever had, any line he’d drawn in the sand he’d crossed, all for the Alliance. What was one more, when it really mattered? He had favors he could call in, strings he could pull. He could make this promise something _real_ and then maybe—just maybe—save some piece of his soul, some little sliver of goodness of the man he might have been if he hadn’t been beaten down by war and death._ _

__Regrets weren’t his currency. He’d never let himself feel guilt, remorse, had buried it at the first sign and learned to live with his decisions. He’d made hard choices and they’d made him. But… the glimmer of a chance now, this thread of hope, to be something more._ _

__Jyn nodded, her eyes shadowed, and he let her go. Sex didn’t mean anything, couldn’t mean anything, and they weren’t foolish enough to think it did and yet…_ _

__She was gone in moments, going back to Krennic, going to get Cassian another man to kill, and he should have felt small and sick but didn’t. Every other thought was pushed down and pushed away until only the and yet remained._ _

___And yet…_ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. i finished this chapter earlier because i wanted to post it  
> 2\. not because it's the sex chapter  
> 3\. (narrator: it was, in fact, because it was the sex chapter)  
> 4\. finally earning that rating and it feels so good!  
> 5\. i gave jyn's virginity status a real consideration. full stop canon!jyn is in no way a virgin but considering the extra level of creep krennic exudes in this au i couldn't conceivably think of a time/place where jyn had enough breathing room to do the naked tango with a man/woman of her choice  
> 6\. luckily cassian andor has the face of man who enjoys going downtown, uptown, crosstown, in rush hour and on lazy sunday mornings  
> 7\. the next chapters will not be so sexy, in fact, they will be awful i'm warning you know  
> 8\. sorry


	5. v.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for abuse and violence at the end of the chapter

Krennic was still not off-planet by the time Jyn returned from Nar Shadaa, and it was both a blessing and a curse. It made the near impossibility of getting Galen Erso off Eadu a little less so, though that wasn’t to say it was anywhere near doable. But it made her just as nervous. Since she was six, she’d never known a moment’s peace from Krennic. He’d always been there, chewing at the edges of her sanity, taking up her air, forcing her to breathe him in. And now he was gone and her nerves felt stretched raw, every fight or flight instinct she had throwing itself bodily at _flight!_

Except where would she fly to?

She worried her kyber necklace and tried very hard not to think of Cassian. Tried and failed. He had promised her. Get him Galen and he’d get her out. She’d could… she didn’t know be a moisture farmer on Tatoonie or something, anything, far away. She could make a new name, a new person, and be _them_. Someone who didn’t know what it was like to feel like every breath was a danger, every moment a threat. Someone who’d never heard of the names Galen Erso or Orson Krennic or… Cassian Andor.

The sharp, jagged edge of her crystal sliced across the pad of her thumb, causing a droplet of blood to swell just beneath its thin surface.

Silly, stupid, that startling moment of sharp, biting regret—of hesitation. Cassian Andor wasn’t a man that could ever be something like hers—because she could never have a man like Cassian Andor. He was a soldier, down to his bones, and she didn’t have the wherewithal or space in her battered heart to take up the cause he’d lay down his life for without blinking. He dug in and stood his ground, and Jyn searched for escape hatches.

And… and… she couldn’t— _couldn’t_ —let herself think about how soft his lips how felt, and how they felt on hers, like they’d been fitted and formed and created to kiss her. How kissing him made her want to cry or burrow into him and become a part of him. How his touch, even when it was gripping and bruising and hard, and how the angular lines of his body and its history of violence didn’t make her ran away but clutch at him and keep him close.

She boxed those memories up, neatly folded and tucked them away, because that’s all they could be. Maybe years from now, when she was old woman and she couldn’t remember what terror tasted like at the back of her throat, she could pull them out and let herself regret.

For now, all she could do was find Galen Erso.

Eadu was working on skeleton crew of Imperial assets. Per Krennic’s usual style he liked to move around with an entourage, especially when Moff Tarkin was around. There hadn’t been anyone to even check Jyn in when she’d landed and she was too wired to think about the implications of that.

But Galen Erso was still on-planet. He never left. He wasn’t allowed to leave and Jyn had never really thought about it before but now she wondered—he’d dropped that key to the blueprint database, knowing very well what she was going to do. It could mean a lot of things, and didn’t have to mean anything more than a pissing contest between Krennic and Erso, but getting an Imperial scientist off an Imperial planet would go smoother if he was willing.

She showered again, took too long touching the strips of red across her thighs where Cassian’s stubble had scrapped, and changed back into her Imperial gray. The base was quiet in a way she had never heard it before, a stillness to the air that made her painfully aware of each footfall that reverberated on the polished floor, her breath coming out slow and even, her heart so loud in her ear.

Instincts were telling her to turn around and go. Not just back to her room, but _go_. Back to Nar Shadaa, back to Cassian maybe, but as far from here as possible. She swallowed it, and swallowed the lump at the back of her throat, and forced herself to amble down toward the Erso’s lab—not too fast, not too slow.

As always it was bright with artificial sunlight and forced Jyn to blink owlishly at the room, trying to adjust her eyes to the sharpness of the light. “Doctor Erso?”

As before he stood alone, tall and broad-shouldered, with sunlight streaming around him, making him more a shadowy outline than anything else. At the sound of her voice, he spun, hands dropping heavily to his sides. Even from this distance, with her eyes stinging from the too-bright room, Jyn could see the alarm in his face.

“Jyn,” he said, voice hoarse. “What are you doing here?”

She swallowed and tasted the familiar bitter tang of panic at the back of her throat. She didn’t think she’d seen Erso ever look like anything but perfectly in control, perfectly cool and calm. “I need to talk to you.” Her voice sounded far away.

He was all but running down the steps from the raised platform. “You have to leave,” he snapped. “You have to go right now.”

 _Go where?_ she nearly demanded, a hysterical giggle threatening to bubble up her throat. Didn’t he know there was nowhere else to go? “I need to speak with you.” She felt like a kriffing holorecord stuck on repeat. It was the only thing she could seem to process— _get Erso, get to a ship, go to Cassian._

“They know.” Erso was close enough now to reach for her and he went for her elbow. Jyn instantly and instinctively recoiled and his hand dropped away. “Jyn, they _know_.”

A panicked breath escaped her but that was all she could manage. The door behind her was already opening with a hiss of air, the sound of Imperial boots on the ground filling the space. At least seven of them, coming for her—she would have never figured she’d warrant such a show of force.

Very slowly, with deliberate, unhurried movements, she turned and faced Krennic. She knew what he wanted and expected, fear. Fear that she had been caught, fear of what he would do to her, fear of _him_. And she could feel it, the low, hard burn of fear in her gut but she didn’t let it reach her eyes. There was no point, it couldn’t help her now, and if nothing else she wouldn’t give him this last satisfaction.

Krennic’s lips twisted into a dark scowl. Behind him Moff Tarkin loomed like a wraith, something out of a nightmare, his gaunt cheeks even more hollow and severe.

“Krennic,” Erso began.

“Take them both,” Tarkin ordered.

Jyn closed her eyes, just for a moment, just for a second, as the soldiers approached. For a split second, she was at peace, she was in another place. A small little apartment on Nar Shadaa with Cassian Andor panting her name into her neck, his body hard and warm and covering hers like a shield. For a moment, she remembered what it was like to feel safe.

When she opened her eyes she almost smiled.

 

Sleep was a luxury Cassian could rarely afford. Anymore, if he got a full four hours of undisturbed rest he felt like he’d lucked out. It was what happened when you woke up at every sound, body little clink of noise, body sensed like a predator about to spring. His entire life had been a series of half-packed bags, ready to go at a moment’s notice, sleeping with one ear to the ground, one eye opened, waiting for the sound of blaster fire.

Even on Yavin IV, the safest place he was probably ever going to find himself, he couldn’t turn it off. The sound of soldiers talking jolted him awake, the sound of a blaster cartridge being reloaded had him reaching for his own, tucked under his pillow, loaded and ready to go. There’d been more quick escapes than he could count, than he wanted to count, climbing out windows and scrambling down the sides of building just before Imperial troopers beat down the door—never looking for Cassian Andor, but always looking for whoever he was that day.

His body tensed, even as he recognized the metallic clanks of Kaytoo’s footfalls, hand snaking slowly across his starched sheets for the familiar, comforting touch of dedlanite.

Keeping Kaytoo out of somewhere he wanted to go was impossible, and would involve an intense rewriting that he wasn’t willing to risk, so Cassian had simply given him unfettered access to his room. Besides, if anyone honored protocol and privacy it was Kaytoo. Which meant if he was at Cassian’s door three hours after he’d _finally_ closed his eyes there was a damn good reason.

“What,” he was barking even before the droid had fully entered the room, hunkering his shoulders down to fit through the frame.

“General Draven wants to speak with you.” The droid, of course, had no inflection in his tone, so there was no way to tell what meaning should be put behind those words—it didn’t matter. Cassian’s stomach clenched with foreboding anyway.

“Where?”

“War Room.”

He got dressed quickly and was still buttoning his jacket when he entered the room. It was always dim and quiet here, but it had never brought Cassian any kind of peace—lives were sacrificed here, battles fought and lost, men and women he’d recruited and trained sent to their deaths for the promise of a better tomorrow.

With Yavin IV in its moon cycle for the next seven hours the base felt unnaturally still, its general hum of activity muted. The room was empty saved for Draven, looking at if he’d just crawled out of bed as well, and Senator Mon Mothma, immaculate in her flowing white robes.

He didn’t notice Bodhi Rook sitting beside Draven until he’d stepped up to the holoprojector. The man had a habit of curling up in whatever space he was given, trying to look as small as possible. He didn’t even glance up at Cassian.

“Captain Andor,” Mon Mothma said gently. She motioned to Rook. “We’ve just received… news.”

He clasped his wrist one hand and pressed it to the small of his back. “Sir?” His directed it at Draven. He liked Mon Mothma, but she would be gentle and careful and dance around what she needed to say in the ways politicians did. It was she needed to do, but it wasn’t what Cassian needed to hear. He needed facts.

“Rook here’s told us of some commotion on Eadu.”

Cassian had expected it, had sensed it, and his throat still went dry as dust. “Commotion?”

“Galen Erso got a message out to me, warning me not to come back to Eadu,” Rook managed, looking like he was going to be ill. “I followed up with some friends still on planet and they confirmed…”

“Galen Erso and a woman we’ve identified as your contact Jyn have been arrested and taken aboard Imperial-class Star Destroyer, currently in orbit above Eadu,” Draven said, cutting through Rook’s stumbling words. “Our intel confirms that both Erso and the girl are in lockdown on charges of collusion with Rebel forces.”

Cassian’s stomach bottomed out. He wanted to close his eyes, just for one long moment, and concentrate on breathing, concentrate on slowing the painful slam of his heart against his ribs, but he couldn’t. He met Draven’s gaze unblinking.

_The soft sounds Jyn made at the back of her throat, the sweet taste of her lips, the way she clung to him, like he was something steady and sure, like he was something that could hold another person up—_

“What are we going to do?” Rook demanded.

Cassian knew the answer before Draven spoke. “We have neither the assets nor the manpower to state any sort of rescue mission if it was one of our own men, let alone an Imperial snitch and an Imperial scientist. It’s unfortunate we didn’t get more information about the weapon the Empire’s building, but we have the blueprints and that’s something. It’ll have to be enough.”

Rook came to his feet with a sudden burst of manic energy. “They’ll die!” His eyes were wide and horrified, the scraggily wisps of his hair plastered to the side of his face from sweat and grease. He’d ran the entire way here, with that warning, with that hope. “They’re going to kill them.”

Mon Mothma sighed, a slow exhalation of air of a woman who had lost friends and family, who’d seen too many people die, who’d let too many people die. “Unfortunately, General Draven has a point. We’re not taking it to a vote because there’s no possibility of mounting an extraction.” She glanced at Cassian. “Captain Andor’s contact was a valuable source of information, but we’re not at risk to exposure. We have no reason to believe she knew what was on the Imperial blueprints and she had no knowledge of Alliance intel.”

Yes, the only thing Jyn knew was Cassian’s name and that wouldn’t be anything to trade for. Cassian Andor had featured on Imperial feeds a number of times but the Empire had no way to ferret him out. He was a ghost, more of an idea than a man, a shadow that the Empire couldn’t pin or draw out. Cassian Andor didn’t have a family or a history that wasn’t war. It was hard to beat a man with nothing to lose.

But it hadn’t been a ghost who’d kissed Jyn that night, who pressed into her and felt her entire body melt against his.

Rook opened and closed his mouth half-formed words coming in a jumbled rush of air.

“Orders?” Cassian asked over the pilot.

“Standby,” Draven said. “We’re gonna wait this out, have Intel comb over those blueprints, figure out what’s so important about them, and then we’ll need you to move.”

He nodded, a muscle in his jaw popping where he had his teeth clenched so hard. “Understood.”

Rook was dismissed in the same breath and knew better than to try to plead his case to Draven or Mon Mothma. Instead, he followed Cassian out, nearly jogging to keep up with his ground-eating strides. 

“We can’t just leave them. You _can’t_ just leave Jyn.” Rook was breathless and terrified, a strange contraction of nervousness and frantic energy.

“Shut up, Rook.”

Rook reached his side and Cassian was too wired to stop the hand that shot out to his elbow and yanked at him. “Galen said I _had_ to protect Jyn.”

Cassian came to an abrupt halt, nearly making Rook trip. “Why?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. But when I started take Jyn to meet you that’s what Galen said—that no matter what I had to make sure that Jyn was okay, Jyn was safe, when all this was done.” Rook was in no mood to elaborate on his relationship with Galen Erso and said, “We have to get them.”

“I have orders,” Cassian said around a tongue that felt swollen and fuzzy.

He thought of Jyn, her wide eyes consuming her face, her hair wet from the ‘fresher, her hands clutching at his shoulders. Her mouth close to his, whispering, promise me.

_Promise me._

“Captain Andor—”

“Shut up.” He grabbed Rook by the collar of his jacket and dragged him toward a shadowy corner and hissed, “One hour. Meet me at your cargo ship.”

If Cassian had let himself think he knew logic and cold hard truth would shut him down, would drag him back into that cold, dark place and let Jyn die alone and scared in some Imperial prison, Imperial hands choking the life out of her. So he didn’t let himself think. Not why, or how, he was doing this. Just that he had to. That it was fundamentally imperative. Not just to save Jyn, but to save himself to.

“One hour or I leave without you.”

Bodhi Rook swallowed, but nodded.

 

Jyn wasn’t afraid of dying. There’d been moments in her life where she’d be grateful for death, for an end. But pain… Krennic had spent twenty-two years instilling a bone-deep terror of pain in her. He’d used it like a leash, tugging at it whenever she dared step out of line, until she folded back to where he wanted her.

And even knowing it, knowing that she was conditioned like this, couldn’t stop it from happening.

They’d break her, she knew, long before she’d die. The only consolation was that she didn’t know enough for it to do them any good. Krennic wouldn’t get that satisfaction and, with any luck, Moff Tarkin would finally kill him.

She’d been sitting in this room, with a single durasteel chair and no windows, for who knew how long. She didn’t know what had happened to Galen Erso, but it didn’t matter now she supposed. Friend or enemy of the rebellion, it didn’t matter. They were both dead.

The door slid open and Jyn tensed, kept her eyes narrowed on her feet, at her scuffed up boots.

“Look at me,” Krennic said, low and dangerous. His anger was always worse when it was quiet, when he wasn’t raging but coiling to spring. Jyn swallowed, afraid that her bravery would falter in the face of it. “ _Look at me._ ”

He gripped her chin with two fingers, forcing her lift her eyes. Krennic’s face was carefully neutral, lips compressed into a thin line, but she could feel his fingers trembling against her skin—not in fear, of course, but in anger. She could see the hard, bitter glint of it in his eyes and a slimy worm of fear crawled up her throat.

“Tell me what you told the Rebels, Jyn,” Krennic ordered her, voice soft and harsh. His breath came out in hard, bitter puffs of hot hair. “Things will be easier for you if you cooperate with me.”

She knew what he meant. There was no way she was leaving the star-destroyer alive. She knew what the Empire did to its traitors. But there was death and then there was suffering, and Krennic had just promised her an easy death. Her fingers, cuffed behind her back, trembled and every instinct demanded that she obey, bend to his will, give him what he wanted. Just like she always did. She wasn’t a Rebel, wasn’t loyal or believed in the cause, and once they found out what happened—if they ever found out what happened—there would be no rescue. They’d leave her here to rot, an asset that had reached the end of its shelf life. She owed them no loyalty.

But she thought of Cassian, fierce and quiet and so strong. Cassian who spoke of the rebellion like it was a living, breathing _thing_ , organic and real. The Rebellion had Cassian’s loyalty. He would die for it without hesitation and Jyn wished in that moment that she had that kind of faith, that kind of resolve.

“What did the Rebels want, Jyn?” Krennic demanded, fingers tightening to a bruising force, as if he sensed her thoughts drifting. “What did you give them?”

She stared at a point beyond Krennic’s shoulder. _Just one more moment_ , she thought, _just one moment where I’m somewhere else, anyone else. Think of moisture farms on Tatooine, of planets hundreds of miles away, of a woman’s voice stroking your hair, love and warmth and safety. Think of Cassian._

It felt like she was taking some of his strength into her, shoring up her defenses, the bent and crooked places in her that Krennic had tried to warp over the years. The fight wasn’t hers, and she had never wanted it to be, but maybe… maybe she could do this.

She met Krennic’s eyes, unblinking, her lips peeling back from her teeth in a hard smile. “Everything.”

Jyn had expected his anger but still gasped in shock when his hand smacked across her cheek, the force it sending her collapsing the floor. She blinked against at the black dots that swarmed her vision. Torture wasn’t anything new to the Empire, but there were machines and droids to do it for them, to keep their hands clean. This was raw and personal and her entire body trembled.

Krennic stood above her, feet on either side of her, and began to slowly peel his gloves off. Jyn laid prone, curled up on her side, fingers flexing and unflexing in her restrains. She said nothing when she felt him crouch over her, felt his fingers brush her throat. She focused on her breathing, even and deep.

“This isn’t a game, Jyn.” Krennic whispered harshly. His fingers curled around her throat and lifted her by her neck. Jyn didn’t move, didn’t kick or try to break his hold. He wanted her struggles, wanted the proof of her fear, and though it burned like acid at the back of her throat she wouldn’t let him see it. “Tell me everything you give to the rebels. Their names. Everything you know about them and their plans. Maybe I can help you.”

Jyn twisted her neck in his grip to meet his eyes again. He looked half-wild, something out of her worst nightmares. And yet, now that she was here and facing it and so close to the end, there was a refreshing sense of relief. He had no power over her and he knew it. She could taste it in his anger.

“No.”

There was no way to stop the sound of pain that escaped her when Krennic slammed her head back against the ground. She could taste the metallic tang of her blood on her tongue, filling up her mouth, and forced herself to swallow. Krennic’s fingers tightened over her neck, to the point of bruising, to the point of breaking her windpipe, and Jyn couldn’t stop her body’s instinctive reaction, trying to buck him off, trying to get to air as her lungs burned.

Krennic’s face swayed in front of her eyes, face hard and unforgiving, lips parted and hair wild around his glinting eyes. He was going to kill her, Jyn realized, and there wasn’t going to be any suffering at all.

“Director Krennic.”

Jyn drew in harsh, unsteady breaths as the pressure at her throat suddenly eased, lung screaming in agony at the sudden rush of air into them. She rolled onto her side, coughing and gagging, Krennic still straddling her.

Around him Jyn could see Galen Erso, wide-eyed and horrified, cuffed like Jyn was. A stormtrooper had a hand on his shoulder, as if he’d had to be restrained after seeing Krennic.

“Ah,” Krennic said, coming to his feet, smoothing back his hair. “Galen. Jyn and I were just having a chat but she’s proving to be as a stubborn as her mother was. Perhaps _you_ would be more amendable than she is?”

“Jyn,” Erso said, like a man drunk. “Jyn.”

“It can go easy for her or it can go very poorly for her, Galen,” Krennic said, sensing a weakness in the man and immediately capitalized on it. “She’s made her choice but _you_ —you could save her. Surely you don’t want her to suffer?”

“Don’t,” Jyn rasped out, her throat feeling like it was on fire. “Don’t tell him a kriffing thing.”

“I want to know what the rebels have, Erso. I know you know. Jyn wouldn’t betray me, not unless someone pushed her to.”

Erso’s eyes sought out Jyn’s, locking and holding, and something passed between them. Something made Jyn want to weep, a sense of loss she couldn’t understand, but recognized on a soul deep level. There was such sadness and resignation in Erso’s eyes, in the downcast turn of his lips. Both of them were dead. He knew that.

All that was left would be to decide how they went.

“You don’t know Jyn at all,” Erso said quietly and Jyn had to close her eyes to fight back a wave of tears. He wasn’t going to give in to Krennic.

With another harsh sound of anger Krennic spun and kicked Jyn so hard in her stomach her body seemed to cave in on itself, forgetting momentarily how to breathe again.

“I won’t have it,” Krennic thundered. His foot cracked down hard on Jyn’s hip. “I’ll get what I want out of both of you, one way or the other. Do you want me to start taking _pieces_ off, Galen? Is that what you want?” Another kick to her side, her rib threatening to crack beneath the force. “Those pretty fingers? How about her eyes? Lyra’s eyes. Shall I take those first?”

“Krennic!” Erso cried, struggling against the stormtrooper, trying to get to Krennic and Jyn. “Stop it! Stop it! It was my idea! It was mine! She doesn’t know anything. She can’t tell you anything!”

“Don’t,” Jyn tried to, but Krennic’s foot manage to clip the underside of her chin. Stars burst in front of her eyes, blinding her, filling her mouth with so much blood she nearly choked on it.

“Sir!” Even through the voice modulator in his helmet the stormtrooper sounded horrified. “I’ve been sent to inform you Lord Vadar has arrived.”

Krennic stopped mid-kick, turning to address the stormtrooper. “Has he?” He sounded half excited, half-terrified.

“Yes, sir.”

“Look what you’ve done, Galen. I’m so disappointed.” Krennic sounded more in control now, the anger in his voice replaced by a smug pleasure. A certainty that he would win. “You’ve sentenced your own daughter to a fate worse than death.”

Jyn couldn’t move, her entire body battered to the point of being completely paralyzed. Her fingers twitched with the desire to move and she blinked at Galen through the blood pouring down her face and obscuring her vision she saw it. _The truth._

Her father.

Her throat worked wildly, but no sound would came out. The pain and the fear hadn’t threatened to break her. But this would. _Her father_. She felt dizzy, like she wanted to throw up, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t fight the slow, painful slide into unconsciously.

“Take Erso and Jyn to the holding cell.” Krennic glanced down at Jyn, his smile cruel, the last thing Jyn saw as her mind blinked out. “You’re going to wish you’d told me everything, Jyn. You’re going to wish you’d thrown yourself on my mercy, by the time Lord Vadar’s finished with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. there's a lot of reasons why this is late  
> 2\. it's mostly because i wrote a chunk of it at work, realized i can't send outbound emails at work, got depressed, decided to stubborn find a way to get it out of my office instead of simply rewriting it  
> 3\. it was the principal of thing goddamnit  
> 4\. anyway i rewrote the chapter  
> 5\. this was kind of hastily edited  
> 6\. i mean all these chapters are hastily edited because they're edited by yourself truly usually around 1am but this is worse because i just wanted to publish it  
> 7\. i have a lot of reasons why krennic seems a lot more Awful in this au than in the movie itself  
> 8\. imo krennic always came off as creepily obsession, especially re: galen, and even more so then the prequel novel to the point where i am solidly convinced krennic was, even if not willingly, in love with galen  
> 9\. so imagine if krennic had a assured leash for galen in jyn and jyn becomes someone he can creepily mold to his own liking, someone who has to always listen to him and do what he wants, and top of that jyn is galen's daughter and krennic is (reluctantly) in love with galen?  
> 10\. things get creepy, my dudes  
> 11\. man i hope krennic gets shot  
> 12\. on the bright side i think there's only about 2 or 3 chapters left to go and they hopefully won't take as long as this one to get posted  
> 13\. but i am often a liar


	6. vi.

Vadar disliked emerging from the destructive power of the lava tubes of Mustafar, where he had unthinking, unquestioning droids to care for him. There were days now where he wouldn’t emerge from the bacta tank, content to float in a half-awareness of the world, the force pulled around him like a cloak—the only thing keeping death at bay, forcing unreliable organs to obey the single, driving need to survive.

His Master only called on him now in the direst of needs. In the beginning, he had an almost constant presence by the new Emperor’s side, a shadowy monolith of lethal might and deadly intentions. He’d executed countless Jedi on live holo-feeds, installing the fear needed in the newborn Empire. Now he served better as a ghost, a cautionary tale of the wrath of an Empire.

Vadar only existed to service.

It had been his Master who had ordered him to the star-destroyer. They were interested in Krennic’s planet-killer, but not confident. A new source of terror, of power, would always be welcomed but other than the pocket resistance of the rebels they had the galaxy full under heel. But they had enough resources to fund Krennic’s ambition and the trivial powerplay between Tarkin and Krennic kept the two from being a true nuisance to his Master.

Krennic awaited him in his private chambers on the star-destroyer, a set of rooms that Vadar found personally grating—they were richly furnished and stocked with expensive foods and drinks and reminded him too much decadence of the old Republic senators he had loathed so much. But the man’s eyes followed Vadar as he stalked across the room, unable to truly disguise his hint of fear. And even if he had been able to mask it, there was no hiding it in the Force. He felt it like a slimy, metallic tang in the air, a pungent scent that stirred in the monster that was Vadar. He feed on it in the way of the old Sith lords, the way his Master had taught him to, used it and his rage to sustain him.

“My lord,” Krennic said. His stance was not one of an imperial soldier, one hand wrapped around his other wrist, folded neatly in front of him, legs braced. It was the stance of a man who’d grown up in affluence, his snowy white cape and grey uniform pristine and carefully fitted to his lean form.

The few times Vadar had met Krennic he’d barely resisted crushing the man’s windpipe—and not always with the Force.

“I have been made aware of issues regarding your project, Director.”

Tarkin already had given him personal report, more than happy to deliver Krennic to Vadar for the slaughter. He had kept himself distant from the project to claim amnesty from its failures, but close enough—and confident enough in it—to claim credit if his rival were to be removed.

Krennic paled, no doubting thinking of horror stories about the Emperor’s enforced cutting down droves of Imperials who’d dared displease him. “An exaggeration, truly. It’s being handled.”

“Has the girl divulged what she’s given to the rebels?” Vadar wanted to know.

He watched the man’s throat move. “No, but she will soon.”

He’d been made aware when he’d first arrived that Krennic had been uncommonly rough with the traitor. He had sensed the soldier’s repulsion when he’d told him that Krennic was questioning the prisoner and while Vadar did not concern him with the wellbeing of the girl Krennic’s clear personal rage at the betrayal gave him pause.

“I am to understand she was your… ward.”

“Galen Erso’s daughter,” Krennic said, lips curling, his hate staining the force a pale red. “I found her usual to ensure his loyalty, but she was not made aware of the connection. She had no reason to seek out the rebels unless Galen pushed her to it.”

Vadar was uninterested in Krennic’s affront. He lifted a gloved hand and saw Krennic’s fingers tense, as if ready to shoot up to his throat. “I am displeased by your progress, Director. And the Emperor will be more so.”

“She’s a stubborn little thing,” Krennic insisted. “But we will break her and find out what she gave to the rebels. In the meantime, my scientists are pouring over the Death Star blueprint plans. It seems unlikely that Erso—”

“Enough.” Vadar tightened his fingers and heard Krennic’s sharp intake of breath, the Force pushing in close to the man’s throat. Applying pressure had always been an effective way to manage even the most preening of Imperials.

“M—my lord.”

“I am uninterested in your excuse.” Life had so little value to a man who lived on fear and hate and rage alone and for longer than Krennic would ever realize his life hung in the balance, Vadar weighing it the way he would an insect’s. And he only lived because squashing it would take more effort than it would bring him pleasure.

These days the very act of existing was a taxing effort on his body. He was breaking down, the damage from Mustafar caving inward. His true potential, his true connection to the Force, would remain forever locked. His entire being, his entire connection to the Force, had laser-focused on the effort it took to keep himself alive. He knew it, his Master knew it, and soon if Vadar was not every careful his Master would find someone to replace him. There were no Jedi left—he had made sure of it, cut down the those who had managed to escape the purge, cut them with impunity, with satisfaction and pleasure, perhaps the last true joy he felt, thinking _how dare they, how dare they live when she does not_ —but that did not mean the Light Side had no recourse. There were force-sensitive children, even now, growing up in obscurity, unware of their untapped strength, walking through Naboo’s thick forests or dozing in the back of a speeder in Coruscant’s busy skyways, perhaps even toiling under the burning twin suns of Tatooine—they existed and one day his Master would want one of them to replace him. Vadar would not be replaced, cast aside, when his Master had made him this monster, shaped him into this form. If he had been forced to live after Mustafar then he would only die on his terms.

He released Krennic. “I no longer faith in your ability to clean up this mess, Director.” And he and Krennic both knew Vadar’s words were the Emperor’s words, he spoke no other’s. “Bring the girl to me. I will question her.”

Krennic couldn’t speak passed his coughing and gagging, hand wrapped around the shuddering column of his throat. And yet managed a silted, “No.” Vadar was almost impressed. The man’s ambition outweighed his fear. “No, I can make the girl. She _will_ talk to me.”

Vadar said nothing, considering the matter done with. He had no patience for Orson Krennic, or men like him—Tarkin or any of the Moffs that skittered around the Empire like the unwanted insects they were. The galaxy would better off without them, just as they were better off without bickering Senators.

“There are other ways to convince her to divulge her secrets,” Krennic said so softly Vadar barely heard him beneath the whirl of the machine that kept him alive.

Vadar was a creature of rage and hate, it fueled him, kept him alive, a black, hard ball where his heart had once been. He’d given himself completely over to the Force and if he loosened his grip, even for a moment, his body would begin to shut down. He had no space for anything else, he had purged himself of everything else—any regret, any remorse, or grief he might have felt long ago; it served no purpose, he could not look back and had sacrifice and lost too much not go forward. He had dedicated to himself to this path and all that was left was the revenge.

And yet—some little sliver of him, some part that was still that weakling Anakin Skywalker, shuddered in revulsion, recognized that look in Krennic’s eyes. He’d been aware of the man’s strange obsession with Galen Erso, wasn’t truly surprised that it seemed to have transferred to his offspring, but he hadn’t concerned himself with it as long as Krennic continued to work on the Death Star. But seeing it, the gleam in Krennic’s dark eyes, made what remained of his stomach curdle.

And Vadar should not care, one way or the other, what happened to the girl, what method was employed to break her—he’d maimed and tortured and murdered without hesitation or remorse—and yet he found himself saying, “This is not a matter for debate, Director. You will bring the girl to me as soon she is recovered enough to speak _and_ you will be stripped of your rank and your duties.”

“You cannot—” Sense halted the rest of the Director’s words.

“Be pleased my Master has hope yet for this weapon of yours. Men have died for far less transgressions.”

He swept from the room and if he had been capable of it he might have wondered if he hadn’t just spared Galen Erso’s daughter from a far worse fate than the death he would deliver her.

 

Jyn swam in a thick, syrupy haze of pain. She couldn’t remember hurting more, not at the worst moment under Krennic’s thumb. Her body felt like one broken bone, one long line of searing pain. Even the action of pulling air into her lung made her body shudder in denial.

For a moment she wanted to sink below the pain, knowing that in that black oblivion there’d be no agony, no suffering, at last she’d be free of Krennic. But some stubborn little section of her heart, a weed that had managed to grow despite years of neglect and starvation it dug its talons in and would not let her surrender, not to the pain, not to anything. If all she could do was fight, then she would fight until she was dead.

But beneath the anger and the pain was an even sharper pain of grief, of mourning. So close. She’d been so damn close and of course, _of course_ , Krennic had snatched it from her. How could she even let herself hope?

“Jyn. Stay with me.” Something slimy and cold touched her lips.

She thought of Cassian one last time, the solid weight of him, the feel of him inside her. At least she would that, she thought. One thing wholly hers.

“Cracked rib, at least,” an unfamiliar voice was saying above her. “The wrist is broken, the ankle is swollen. I’m not sure about her jaw but it looks rough.”

Someone cupped her cheek, gently and lovingly, but it caused pain to bolt through her, hot as a vibroblade, and she mumbled a protest and tried to pull away.

“No, Jyn, shhh. Let the kolto take effect.”

Kolto? She could feel it now, the icy-hot burn as it worked sluggishly to heal her battered body.

“Bacta would have been better,” another voice said. “Kolto isn’t going to fix the damage, only make it manageable.”

“It will have to do. Jyn? Can you open your eyes?”

She could, she found, but she didn’t want to, afraid of once more existing in this universe where Krennic had a leash around her neck, could strangle her whenever he wanted. She remembered the look in his eyes, feverish and bright, the undeniable pleasure he got from hurting her. She’d always known that he could, that he enjoyed the knowledge that her survival relied on his good will, but to feel his pleasure as he crouched above her… she wanted to throw up.

“Jyn.”

She forced her eyes to crack open against every instinct to keep them shut. Galen Erso’s face swam in front of her and Jyn let out a shuddering breath, her ribs screaming in a cacophony of agony.

_You’ve sentenced your own daughter to a fate worse than death._

Jyn’s fingers clenched and unclenched into restless fists. Her father. Since she could remember she wondered about her parents, who they were and where they were, why she had wound up in Krennic’s hands, if they had given her up or if she had been taken from them—if they were alive or dead—and _he_ had been right there the whole time, watching her and seeing her suffering, knowing what Krennic was doing to her, could do to her. Her stomach twisted, vomit churning at the back of her throat, a mixture of anger and grief lancing through her.

He’d never said anything, to the little girl that had yearned for her parents. He’d let her suffer along. It was little worm of a thought, a kernel of resentment that had festered in her through years of suffering. _He couldn’t. Krennic was using me against him_ , the logical part of her countered. Both refused to be silent.

“I wanted to tell you, Jyn,” Erso said quickly, helping her into a sitting position. More slimy, cold kolto on her face. “I couldn’t.”

She scooted away from him, as much as her aching body would allow, and ignoring the sting of guilt at the hurt of Erso’s face. She couldn’t help the mistrust, the wariness of him. Whatever he would have been, all he was a stranger.

“It’s good to see you awake.” A man crouched beside her. It was dark in the cramped cell, but from the dim overhead light Jyn could make out a craggy face with a warm smile and grey eyes milky and unseeing.

“Who,” she managed to croak.

“Chirrut,” he said and dragged his fingers, coated in frigid kolto, across her bruised and batter face. “My friend over there in Baze. We were brought here after Jedha.”

“Jedha?” That was from Erso, directly at the tall man with long, dark hangs of air hanging around his scowling face.

“Jedha’s gone,” the man called Baze explained without preamble. “The Empire is calling it a mining accident. But that’s not what it was. They have some sort of weapon… destroyed the entire planet in one shot.”

Jyn would have collapsed if not Chirrut’s quick catch, hands propping her back up against the wall. “Easy,” he advised. “I’m afraid the kolto will only help a little. But it’s all our hosts were willing to offer.”

Jyn nodded and gingerly touched her aching jaw. Thankfully the bone didn’t feel broken—she knew what a broken bone felt like—but it was swollen and tender and even her soft touch made tears spring up in her eyes.

“Why?” she asked, the words scrapping up her throat. The kolto had numbed some of the pain but not enough to stop each movement from creating a low, burning ache all over her. “Why Jedha?”

“Saw Gerrera’s rebels were entrenched there,” Erso said quietly.

Jyn closed her eyes at the word _rebel_. Was Cassian there? She didn’t know where he went when he wasn’t meeting her on Nar Shadaa, but what—what if he’d been there? What if he was dead already, something else Krennic had taken from her, and she didn’t even know it?

_No. No. No._

“You have a kyber crystal,” Chirrut said gently and smiled when Jyn jerked her gaze to him, breaking her out of the roar of a mental break. “I couldn’t help but notice. They were conduits for the Force, and powered the Jedi’s lightsabers. A curious thing, for an Imperial girl to have one.”

“I hid it from him.”

“It was your mother’s,” Erso said quietly, walking over to her. He crouched beside with, hands splayed out on his thighs, and Jyn wanted to curl up into a tight ball, as if she could escape his gaze. It was silly to feel betrayed and hurt, to see the quiet yearning in Erso’s face and feel sick to her stomach. She didn’t know how to approach him, how to approach it.

Didn’t even matter? Hours or days or weeks, they’d die her. A girl, and the father she never knew. What did it matter _now_ , who they were to each other?

She nodded, could see that Erso wanted to say so much more, and was relieved that he didn’t. What could have been hovered between them, years of suffering and loss and separation, people they could have been and weren’t, things that might have been and never was. Jyn curled her fingers around the kyber crystal, too broken and bruised to let herself go down that path. To let herself think about it.

Erso’s jaw twitched but he said nothing.

“What will happen now?” _Darth Vadar_ , the Imperial Boogeyman, was on the start-destroyer and everyone knew what happened when the Emperor unleashed his dog. With nothing more than a flick of his fingers he’d wiped cities off the map, had cut through rebels and Jedi as lethal ease.

But she might prefer the Boogeyman to Orson Krennic.

“I gave the plans to… the rebels.” Jyn licked her lips over Cassian, tasted the rich flavor of his name, couldn’t say it—as if she could keep him safe, keep him with her. “But it wasn’t the full schematics.”

“It was,” Galen said quietly.

She shook her head, the small motion jarring her, making her vision spin. “No. They already checked. It wasn’t complete. That’s why I came back. To get the rest of it.”

“I couldn’t risk Krennic knowing, but it’s complete, Jyn. There’s a code, an encryption, but it’s all there. The schematics, the blueprints, and so much more.” There was something fierce and hard in Galen’s face, a look Jyn had never seen on him before, the creases and deep grooves of all that he’d suffered under Krennic, a man who’d blanketed his own thirst for violence, for revenge, under a layer of ice.

“What did you do?” Jyn asked, whisper soft, Chirrut and Baze just an enthralled as she was, enraptured by the quiet command in this man—her father’s—eyes.

“The Force willing, I architected the Empire’s demise.” It was simply stated, flat and devoid of any real feeling, and it was all the more terrifying for it, for the hollowness in his tone, a man brought to the very edge and managing to cling to life for a final, lethal goal.

“What is it?” Jyn asked, squeezing her eyes shut against a wave of nauseous. With the burning numb of the kolto was wearing off she was left bitterly aware of her bruised and battered body, the ache in her jaw, the swelling around her eyes. The simple act of licking her lips made every nerve ending scream, made her want to curl up into a tight little ball to protect herself from the agony, from the Krennic and what he’d done to her, what he could do to her, from Galen’s and his dark, sad eyes.

 _Whatever you want me to be_ , she wanted to tell him, _I can’t be it. It’s been too long, or it isn’t long enough. I don’t know what you want from me, but I can’t give it to you._ It hovered between them, the knowledge awful and quiet in her not-father’s eyes, and Jyn knew if he touched her she’d break. But he didn’t touch her.

“A trap,” Galen whispered and glanced over at Chirrut and Baze. “I designed it to—”

The unmistakable sound of trooper footsteps. Galen jerked, Jyn curled her knees to her chest, hating herself for the instant, defense haunch of her shoulders, and Chirrut and Baze stood, looking ready to fight, looking like they _could_ fight and win.

Four stormtroopers stopped at their cell. “We want the girl and Erso.” Three kept their blasters trained on Chirrut and Baze and Jyn wondered in the foggy, pain-hazy back of her mind what the two men had done to warrant such caution and wished she could have seen it.

“She’s not well enough to move,” Galen snapped.

“Director Krennic doesn’t care. Get up or we carry you.”

Jyn pushed herself to her feet, the whole world swimming, her tongue fuzzy and heavy in her mouth, dry as sand, but she wouldn’t be dragged to Krennic, wouldn’t give him that satisfaction to seeing her so weak, like he’d always wanted her to be. She was going to die here, on this star-destroyer, with the father she’d never been able to know, she knew and accepted it with a strange, unnerving kind of calm, but she’d go on her own terms. If it was the last act of rebellion she would have against Krennic, she’d grip it with both hands.

Galen slid a hand under her arm, holding her up against trembling body. Jyn squeezed her eyes. Where they went, they went together.

 

 

Cassian held his breath, lodged tight and hot in chest, as he and Bodhi waited that breathless moment for a response from the star-destroyer. It was a long shot, and he normally had far better plans than this, reliant on too much luck and chance but every moment was a moment stacked against Jyn. He knew what the Empire did to traitors, had seen it, had abandoned enough people to it, to know how little time Jyn had.

“You’re clear for entry,” the impassive, even tone of Imperial training. “Remain in your ship and wait for your escort. You’re scheduled for immediate debriefing.”

Of course they were suspicious of Bodhi, and probably anyone who’d been in contact with Galen Erso. _Jyn._

“Yes, sir.” Bodhi killed the comm and glanced over at Cassian, his eyes saucer-wide through the scraggly wisps of his hair, but he was holding himself together, holding his fear back and Cassian felt a respect, an admiration, for him he hadn’t until that moment. This man wasn’t built for war, but he was ready to fight.

“I hope,” Kaytoo said from the navigator’s set to the right of Bodhi, “you have a plan?”

He hadn’t wanted to take droid with him, though not because they were entering the belly of the beast. Chances of Cassian being court martialed were high, and he’d accepted that, but they’d just dismantle Kaytoo for breaking rank. There were already many who grumbled about giving so much free access to a rewired Imperial droid and those grumbles could quickly turn into demands for decommission.

But it was hard to tell Kaytoo no, when he’d been waiting for Cassian and Bodhi in the ship and threatening to sound the alarm if they didn’t take him along.

Cassian glanced over at Bodhi, who glanced over at him, then pulled out his blaster with his right hand and a stun grenade with his left.

Kaytoo wasn’t capable of sighing, but Cassian imagined he if he had been the sound would have been long and low. “Brilliant.”

“We’ll be alright,” Bodhi said, more to himself than anyone else.

Which was good because Cassian’s answer would not have reassured him. _I don’t care_. And he didn’t. His chest was tight, and hot, but he felt alive for the first time in… years, since he was a child maybe and listening to his parents dream of a new world. _Rebellions are built on hope_ , he’d always been told but his had been leeched out of him, he was an automaton of man. But now his nerves were burning, tingling, with excitement, with terror, with anticipation. Maybe Jyn was dead already, and maybe he’d die with her then, taking out as many Imperials as he could. He couldn’t let himself think about why it was an Imperial informant that filled him with more hope than the rebellion ever had, like he’d swallowed a star. All he knew an Empire-free galaxy wouldn’t mean anything if Jyn wasn’t there to see it.

 _This is what it’s supposed to feel like._ This faith, this belief, this rightness solid on his bones, anchoring him to realty.

The cargo ship slid soundlessly into the docking bay, and by some Force-miracle Bohdi’s escort was only three Stormtroopers strong. There was a storage vent beneath the cargo hold, small and tight but Cassian had been in far worse spaces, had once spent three days hunched in a bolt-hole smaller than the span of his arms, unable to sleep, forced to keep his breathing shallow and light or risk being picked up drone scanners.

This was nothing, and it was a pleasure. The troopers didn’t realize what was happening, not as Bohdi sealed the hatch behind them or as Kaytoo deactivated their comm-links, as Cassian opened the hatch and tossed the stun grenade at their feet, the hold exploding in a searing-white light. Cassian had no reservations about killing Imperial soldiers, not when they have returned the favor two-fold, _after_ they had tortured him within an inch of life to break the thing he had helped build up, but Bodhi did and so he was left in the hanger while Kaytoo and Cassian finished up.

“Can you commandeer system access? I need an eye in the sky and someone with door access.”

“Child’s play. I was designed for higher-level functionality after all,” Kaytoo informed him, managing to sound smug despite the lack of inflection in his tone. “I noticed a security panel beside the blast doors. I should be able to rewrite from there.”

Cassian zipped his new suit up to his neck, tight in the wrong places, baggy in the others, and slicked his hair beneath the dull green cap of an Imperial officer. The white trooper armor would have been better, but that was _three_ sizes too big and a lone trooper would have been more suspicious. Still, in a uniform a size too big for him, Cassian could make it work, knew how to walk with Imperial discipline, each footfall as certain and precise as a medi-droid’s surgical knife. He’d spent almost six months once holed up in a little apartment in Alderaan, watching the soldiers and the officers in their drills, until he knew the marches and the salutes like a second nature. Another skin to wear.

“Stay here,” he ordered Bodhi, already slipping into the Imperial cant of a man who’d climbed the ranks and wasn’t used to being questioned.

“I should go with you,” Bodhi protested, brave despite the pallor beneath his tan, beneath the trembling of his fingers. “You might need back up.”

“I need you to be ready for a quick escape,” Cassian added, and didn’t add that he and Kaytoo might be leaving alone, if he couldn’t find Jyn, or if something went wrong. “And they’ll know your face.”

“But still…”

He handed Bodhi the comm-link he’d pilfered from one of the stormtrooper and tapped the one he’d already placed in his ear. “If I need you I’ll call you.”

Bodhi nodded with clear reluctance, but Cassian left him no room for argument, already heading down the ramp with Kaytoo, unconsciously falling into the imperial march with practiced ease. What did it say about him, how ease this was, to put on another’s person skin, be another person. Did he even know who he was?

Maybe he didn’t, maybe Cassian Andor was buried under layers and layers of other people, of other lives half-lived, but he did know whatever still was Cassian Andor inside him was roaring inside him. _Save Jyn_ , it said, _save Jyn. Make something matter._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. [blows dust off this]  
> 2\. back by unpopular demand: it's me  
> 3\. i'm ashamed to admit that i had most of this written up way back in march and am just now finishing it  
> 4\. but i am going to finish it?  
> 5\. bright side?  
> 6\. we've also only got about 2 chapters left so let's... get this in hopefully less than six months  
> 7\. this was originally supposed to have a jyn and vadar scene interrogation, but i ended up cutting it. vadar worked so well in rogue one i think because he was used so sparingly (right up until he became the most Extra, god bless you anakin) and there vadar remains hovering at the edges of jyn's vision, the imperial boogeyman  
> 8\. also jyn needs a break (i say as i definitely don't give her a break)  
> 9\. i wanted chirrut and baze in the story because i love them, they don't have a lot to do, besides being awesome, but hey! not dead!  
> 10\. also this is me, come hell or high water padme gets a shout out in everything i do


End file.
